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Marie Antoinette 



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By 
H. BELLOC 

ILLUSTRATED 




New York 

Doubleday, Page & Company 

1909 



Ali BISHTa KBSBRVED, INCIitJDINa THAT OF TBANSLATIOK 
niTO FOREIGN LANGUAGB8, rNCLUDINQ THB SCANDINAVIAH 



COPTEIGHT, 1909, BY DOUBLEDAT, PAGE & COMPAJTT 
PUBLISHED, OCTOBEB, 1909 



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TO 



GEORGE WYNDHAM 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE 

The eighteenth century, which had lost the appetite 
for tragedy and almost the comprehension of it, was granted, 
before it closed, the most perfect subject of tragedy which 
history affords. 

The Queen of France whose end is but an episode in the 
story of the Revolution stands apart in this : that while all 
around her were achieved the principal miracles of the human 
will, she alone suffered, by an unique exception, a fixed 
destiny against which the will seemed powerless. In person 
she was not considerable, in temperament not distinguished; 
but her fate was enormous. 

It is profitable, therefore, to abandon for a moment the 
contemplation of those great men who re-created in Europe 
the well-ordered State, and to admire the exact convergence 
of such accidents as drew around Marie Antoinette an 
increasing pressure of doom. These accidents united at 
last: they drove her with a precision that was more than 
human, right to her predestined end. 

In all the extensive record of her actions there is nothing 
beyond the ordinary kind. She was petulant or gay, 
impulsive or collected, according to the mood of the moment: 
acting in everything as a woman of her temper — red-headed, 
intelligent and arduous — will always do : she was moved 
by changing circumstance to this or that as many millions 
of her sort had been moved before her. But her chance 
friendships failed not in mere disappointments but in ruin; 
her lapses of judgment betrayed her not to stumbling but 



vi MARIE ANTOINETTE 

to an abyss; her small, neglected actions matured unseen 
and reappeared prodigious in the catastrophe of her life as 
torturers to drag her to the scaffold. Behind such causes 
of misfortune as can at least be traced in some appalling 
order, there appear, as we read her history, causes more 
dreadful because they are mysterious and unreasoned: ill- 
omened dates, fortunes quite unaccountable, and con- 
tinually a dark coincidence, reawaken in us that native dread 
of Destiny which the Faith, after centuries of power, has 
hardly conjured. 

The business, then, of this book is not to recount from 
yet another aspect that decisive battle whereby political 
justice was recovered for us all, nor to print once more in 
accurate sequence the life of a queen whose actions have 
been preserved in the minutest detail, but to show a Lady 
whose hands — for all the freedom of their gesture — were 
moved by influences other than her own, and whose feet, 
though their steps seemed wayward and self-determined, 
were ordered for her in one path that led inexorably to its 
certain goal. 



CONTENTS 



I. The Diplomatic Revolution 








3 


II. Birth and Childhood 








24 


III. The Espousals 










43 


IV. The Du Barry 










61 


V. The Dauphine 










71 


VI. The Three Years . 










98 


VII. The Children . 










156 


VIII. Figaro . 










. 175 


IX. The Diamond Necklace 




' 






. 207 


X. The Notables . 










. 229 


XI. The Bastille . 










. 259 


XII. October . 










. 287 


XIII. Mirabeau 










. 320 


XIV. Varennes 










. 351 


XV. The War 










. 391 


XVI. The Fall of the Palace 










. 411 


XVII. The Temple . 










. 433 


XVIII. The Hostage . 










. 464 


XIX. The Hunger of Maubeuge 








. 487 


XX. Wattignies 








502 


Appendices 




Appendix A. The Operation on Louis the Sixteenth of France 


J 539 


Appendix B. On the Exact Time and Place of Drouet's Ride 


; 543 


Appendix C. The Order to Cease Fire .... 


546 


Appendix D. On the Loge of the "Logotachygraphe" . 


549 


Appendix E. Uponthe"LastPortraitoftheQueen"byKucharsk 


I 551 


Appendix F. On the Authenticity 


of the 


Que 


en's 


Last Lettei 


• 552 



vu 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

The Last Act of the French Monarchy .... Frontispiece 

FACma PAGS 

Maria Theresa 18 

Madame de Pompadour 26 

The First Dauphin 36 

Louis XVI. .;........ 96 

The Emperor Joseph II. ....... 138 

Marie Antoinette, from the Principal Bust at Versailles . . 158 

The Countess of Provence . . . . . . . 172 

Marie Antoinette, by Madame Vig^e Le Brun ^ . . 208 

Portrait Bust of the Duke of Normandy .... 220 

Autograph Note of Louis XVI., Recalling Necker, on July 16th 

After the Fall of the Bastille 284 

The Tuileries from the Garden, or West Side, in 1789 . . 306 
Facsimile of the First Page of the Address to the French Peo- 
ple Written by Louis XVI. Before His Flight ... 348 
Map of the Flight to Varennes and the Return . . (Page) 352 
Sketch Map of Road from Paris to Varennes, June 21 , 1791 " 358 
Sketch Map to Illustrate Drouet's Ride ..." 372 

Paion 384 

Barnave .......... 388 

Facsimile of the First Page of the Letter Written on Sep- 
tember 3, 1791, by Marie Antoinette, to the Emperor, Her 

Brother . 400 

East Front of the Tuileries 420 

An Early View of the Approach to the Tuileries from the Car- 
rousel, Showing the Three Courtyards .... 430 
Contemporary Print of the Fighting in the Courtyard . . 436 
A Relic of the Sack of the Palace . , . . . . 440 

ix 



X MARIE ANTOINETTE 

The Tower of the Temple at the Time of the Royal Family's 

Imprisomnent ........ 444 '^ 

A Rough Miniature of the Princess de Lamballe . . . 450 ^ 
Sanson's Letter Asking the Authorities What Steps He is to 

Take for the Execution of the King .... 458 

Autograph Demand of Louis XVI. for a Respite of Three Days 460 
Report of the Commissioners That All is Duly Arranged for 

the Burial of Louis Capet After His Execution . . 462 

First Page of Louis XVI.'s Will 464 

Order of the Committee of Public Safety in Cambon's Hand- 
writing 474 

Last Portrait of Marie Antoinette 488 ' 

Map of the Battle of Wattignies and the Relief of Maubeuge 

(Page) 503 ' 
Gateway of the Law Courts Through Which the Queen Went 

to Her Death ........ 506 

First Page of Marie Antoinette's Last Letter .... 526 

Facsimile of the Death Warrant of Marie Antoinette . . 530 



MARIE ANTOINETTE 



MARIE ANTOINETTE 



THE DIPLOMATIC REVOLUTION 

EUROPE, which carries the fate of the whole world, 
lives by a life which is in contrast to that of every 
other region, because that life, though intense, 
is inexhaustible. There is present, therefore, in her united 
history, a dual function of maintenance and of change 
such as can be discovered neither in any one of her com- 
ponent parts nor in civilisations exterior to her own. 
Europe alone of all human groups is capable of trans- 
forming herself ceaselessly, not by the copying of foreign 
models, but in some creative way from within. She alone 
has the gift of moderating all this violent energy, of pre- 
serving her ancient life, and by an instinct whose action 
is now abrupt, now imperceptibly slow, of dissolving 
whatever products of her own energy may not be normal 
to her being. 

These dual forces are not equally conspicuous: the force 
that preserves us is general, popular, slow, silent, and 
beneath us all; the force that makes us diversified and full 
of life shines out in peaks of action. 

The agents and the transactions of the conserving force 
do not commonly present themselves as the chief person- 
alities and the most remarkable events of our long record. 
The agents and the transactions of the force that perpetu- 

s 



4 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

ally transforms us are arresting figures, and catastrophic 
actions. Those who keep us what we are, for the most 
part will never be known — they are millions. Those, on 
the other hand, who have brought upon our race its great 
novelties of mood or of vesture, the battles they have won, 
the philosophies they have framed and imposed, the polities 
they have called into existence, they and their works fill 
history. That power which has forbidden us to perish uses 
servants often impersonal or obscure; it is mostly to be 
discovered at work in the permanent traditions of the 
populace and its effects are but rarely visible until they 
appear solid and established by a process which is rather 
that of growth than of construction. That power which 
keeps the mass moving glitters upon the surface of it and 
is seen. 

There are, nevertheless, in this perennial and hidden 
task of maintaining Europe certain exceptional events of 
which the date is clear, the result immediate, and the 
authors conspicuous. Of early examples the victory of 
Constantine in the fourth century, the defeat of Abdul 
Rhaman in the eighth, may be cited. Chief among those 
of later times is a decision which was taken in the middle 
of the eighteenth century by the French and Austrian 
governments and to which historians have given the name 
of the Diplomatic Revolution. 

To comprehend or even to follow the career of Marie 
Antoinette it is essential to seize the nature and the gravity 
of that rearrangement of national forces, for it determined 
all her life. To the great alliance between France and 
Austria, by which such rearrangement was effected she 
owed every episode of her drama. Her marriage, her 
eminence, her sufferings, and her death were each directly 



THE DIPLOMATIC REVOLUTION 6 

the consequence of that compact: its conclusion coincided 
with her birth; from childhood she was dedicated to it 
as a pledge, a bond, and, at last, a victim. Though, there- 
fore, that treaty can occupy but little place in pages which 
deal with her vivid life — a life lived after the signing of 
the document and after its most noisy consequences had 
disappeared — yet the instrument must be grasped at the 
outset and must remain permanently in the mind of all 
who would understand the Queen of France and her dis- 
aster; for it was her mother who made the alliance, the 
statesman who presided over all her fortunes planned and 
achieved it. It stands throughout her forty years like a 
fixed horoscope drawn at birth, or a sentence pronounced 
and sure to be fulfilled. 

The Diplomatic Revolution of the eighteenth century 
sprang, like every other major thing in modern history, 
from the religious schism of the sixteenth. 

If that vast disturbance of the Reformation which threat- 
^ened so grievously the culture of Europe, which maimed 
forever the life of the Renaissance, and which is only now 
beginning to subside, had broken the national tradition 
of Gaul as it did that of Briton, it may confidently be 
asserted that European civilisation would have perished. 
There was not left on the shores of the Mediterranean a 
suflficient reserve of energy to re-indoctrinate the West. A 
welter of small States, hopelessly separated by the violence 
and self-suflBcience of the new philosophy would each have 
gone down the road an individual goes when he forgets or 
learns to despise traditional rules of living and the cor- 
porate sense of mankind. That interaction which is the 
life of Europe would have disappeared. A short period of 
intense local activities would have been followed by general 



6 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

repose. The unity of the Western world would have failed, 
and the spirit of Rome would have vanished as utterly from 
her deserted provinces as has that of Assyria from hers. 

If, on the other hand, the French had chosen the earliest 
moment of the Reformation to lead the popular instinct 
of Europe against the Reformers, and to reestablish unity, 
if as early as the reign of Francis I. (who saw the peril) 
they had imagined a species of crusade, why, then, the 
schism would have been healed by the sword, the humanity 
of the Renaissance would have become a permanent 
influence in our lives rather than an heroic episode whose 
vigour we regret but cannot hope to restore, and the dis- 
covery of antiquity, the thorough awakening of the mind, 
would have impelled Europe towards new and glorious 
fortunes the nature of which we cannot even conjecture, 
so differently did the course of history turn. For it so 
happened that the French — whose temperament, whose 
unbroken Roman legend, and whose geographical position 
made them the decisive centre of the struggle — the French 
hesitated for two hundred years. 

Their religion indeed they preserved. The attempt to 
force upon the French doctrines convenient, in France as in 
England, to the wealthy merchants, the intellectuals, and 
the squires was met by popular risings ; those of the French, 
as they were the more sanguinary so were also the more 
successful. The first massacre of St. Bartholomew, when 
the Catholic leaders were killed in the South, was apt for- 
gotten by the North; and after the second massacre of St. 
Bartholomew in Paris had avenged it, the Reformation 
could never establish in France that oligarchic polity which 
it ultimately imposed upon England and Holland. In a 
word, the Catholic reaction in France was sufficiently violent 



THE DIPLOMATIC REVOLUTION 7 

to recover the tradition of the State; but the full conse- 
quences of that reaction did not follow, nor did France 
support the general instinct of Europe, because, allied with 
the Faith to which the nation was so profoundly attached 
and had just preserved, was the political power of the 
Spanish-Austrian Empire, which the French nation, and its 
leaders, detested and feared. 

It is difficult for us to-day to comprehend the might of 
Spain during the century of the Reformation, and still 
more difficult to grasp that external appearance of 
overwhelming strength which, as the years proceeded, 
tended more and more to exceed her actual (and declin- 
ing) power. 

The supremacy of Spain over Europe resided in a dynasty 
and not in a national idea. It did not take the form of 
over-riding treaties or of attempting the partition of weaker 
States, for it was profoundly Christian, and it was military; 
in twenty ways the position of Spain differed from the hege- 
mony which some modern European State might attempt 
to exercise over its fellows. But it is possible to arrive at 
some conception of what that Empire was, if we remember 
that it reposed upon a vast colonial system which Spain 
alone seemed capable of conducting wuth success, that it 
monopolised the production of gold, and that it depended 
upon a command of the sea which was secured to it by an 
invincible fleet. To such advantages there must further be 
added an armed force not only by far the largest and best 
trained in Europe, but mainly composed of the best fighters 
as v/ell, and — a circumstance more important than all the 
rest — an extent of dominion, due to the union of the 
Austrian and Spanish houses, which gave to Charles V. and 
his successors the whole background, as it were, upon 



8 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

which the map of Europe was painted : in the sea of that 
Emperor's continental possessions, apart from a few insig- 
nificant principalities, France alone survived — an intact 
island with ragged boundaries, menaced upon every side. 
For the Emperor, then master of the Peninsula, of the 
Germanics, and of the New World, was everywhere by sea 
and almost everywhere by land a pressing foe. 

However much this Spanish-Austrian power might stand 
(as it did stand) for the European traditions and for the 
faith of civilisation which France had elected to preserve, 
it was impossible for the French crown and nation not to 
be opposed to its political power if that crown or that 
nation were to survive. The smaller nations of the North 
— the English, the low countries, &c. — were in less peril 
than the French; for these were now the only considerable 
exception to, and were soon to be the rivals of, the Spanish- 
Austrian State. Had the Armada found fair weather, 
Philip might have been crowned at Westminster; but the 
English — united, isolated, and already organized as a 
commercial oligarchy — would have fought their way 
out from foreign domination as thoroughly as did the 
Dutch. The duty of the French was other; their inde- 
pendence was not threatened: it was rather their dignity 
and special soul which were in peril and which had to be 
preserved from digestion into this all-surrounding influence 
of Spain. To preserve her soul France gave — uncon- 
sciously perhaps, as a people, but with acute consciousness 
as a government — her whole energies during four genera- 
tions. The defence succeeded. Through a dozen such 
civil tumults as are native to the French blood, and 
through a long eclipse of their national power, they 
treasured and built up their reserves. After a century of 



THE DIPLOMATIC REVOLUTION 9 

peril they emerged, under Louis XIV. — not only the 
masters, but for a moment the very tyrants of Europe. 

The French did not achieve this object of theirs without 
a compromise odious to their clear spirit. In their secular 
opposition to the Spanish-Austrian power, it was the 
business of their diplomatists to spare the little Protestant 
States and to use them as a pack for the worrying of great 
Austria, whom they dreaded and would break down. The 
constant policy of Henri IV., of Richelieu, of Mazarin, was 
to strengthen the Protestant principalities of North Germany, 
to meet half way the rising Puritanism of England, and 
even at home to tolerate an organised, opulent, and numerous 
body of Huguenots who formed a State within the State. 
At a time when it was death to say Mass in England, 
the wealthy Calvinist just beyond the Channel — at Dieppe, 
for instance — was protected with all the force of the law 
from the fanaticism or indignation of his fellow-citizens ; he 
could convene his synods openly, could hold office at law or 
in municipal affairs, and was even granted a special form of 
representation and a place in the advisory bodies of the 
State. All this was done, not to secure internal order — 
which would perhaps have been better affirmed in France 
as it was in England by the vigorous persecution of the 
minority — but to create a Protestant makeweight to what 
appeared till nearly the close of the seventeenth century the 
overwhelming menace of the Spanish and Austrian Houses. 

Such was the policy which the French Court wisely 
pursued during so long a period that it ffiially acquired the 
force of a fixed tradition and threatened to last on into an 
era of new conditions, when it would prove useless, or, 
later, harmful to the State. The general framework of that 
Anti-Austrian diplomacy did indeed survive from the latter 



10 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

seventeenth till the middle of the eighteenth century; but 
from the time when Louis XIV. in 1661 began to rule alone 
to that final rearrangement of European forces in the 
Diplomatic Revolution, which it is my business to describe, 
the Catholic powers tended more and more to be conscious 
of a common fate and a common duty. One after another 
the portions of the old French diplomatic work fell to pieces 
as the strength of Spain diminished and as the small Protes- 
tant States advanced in their cycle of rapid commercial 
expansion, increasing population and military power; until, 
a generation after Louis XIV. 's death, Protestant Europe 
as a whole had formed in line against what was left of 
Rome. 

It would not be germane to my subject were I to enter 
at any length into the gradual transformation of Europe, 
between 1668 and 1741. The first date is that of the treaty 
which closed the last clear struggle between France and 
Spain; the second date is that of the first great battle, 
MoUwitz, in which Prussia under Frederick the Great 
appeared as a triumphant and equal opponent against the 
Catholic forces of the Empire. It is enough to say that 
during that period the results of that great struggle were 
solidified. Europe was now hopelessly, and, as it seemed, 
finally riven asunder; and those who proposed to continue, 
those who proposed to disperse the stream of European 
tradition gravitated into two camps armed for a struggle 
which is not even yet decided. 

The transition may be expressed as the long life of a man 
— nay, it may be exactly expressed in the life of one man, 
Fleury, for he stood on the threshold of manhood at its 
commencement and in sight of death at its close : what such 
a long life witnessed, between its eighteenth and its ninetieth 



THE DIPLOMATIC REVOLUTION 11 

year, was — if the vast confusion of detail be eliminated 
and the large result be grasped — the confirmation of the 
great schism and the final schism and the final decision of 
France to stand wholly against the North. There appeared 
at last, fixed and consolidated, a Protestant and a Catholic 
division in Europe whose opposing philosophies, seen or 
unseen, denied, ridiculed or ignored, even by those most 
steeped in either atmosphere, were henceforward to affect 
inwardly every detail of individual life, as outwardly they 
were to affect every great event in the history of our Race, 
and every general judgment which has been passed upon 
its actions. 

The Spanish Power, based as it had been, not on internal 
resources, but on a naval and colonial supremacy, could 
not but rapidly decline; it had long been separated from 
the German Empire; it was destined to fall into the orbit 
of France. On the other hand, the England of the early 
eighteenth century was no longer a small community 
absorbed in theological discussion ; she had become a nation 
of the first rank, one that was developing its industries, its 
wealth and its armed strength. She boasted in Marlborough 
the chief military genius of the age; she was already the 
leader in physics; she was about to be the leader in 
mechanical science (with all the riches such a leadership 
would bring) , and she was upon the eve of acquiring a new 
colonial empire. 

In France the privileges of the Huguenots had been with- 
drawn, as the situation grew precise and clear, and the 
breach between them and the nation was made final by 
their active and zealous treason in whatever foreign fleets 
or armies were attempting the ruin of their country. In 
England it had been made plain that the oligarchy, and 



12 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

the nation upon which it reposed, would admit neither a 
strong central government nor the presence of the Catholic 
Church near any seat of power: the Stuart dynasty had 
been exiled; its first attempt at a restoration had been 
crushed. 

Meanwhile there was preparing a final argument which 
should compel men to recognise the clean and fixed division 
of Europe: that argument was the astonishing rise of 
Prussia, for with the appearance upon the field of this new 
and strange force — an own child of the Reform — it was 
evident that something had changed in the very morals 
of war. 

When Austria was at her weakest, when the French 
Court, bewildered but weakly constant to a now meaning- 
less diplomatic habit, was watching the apparent dissolution 
of the Empire and was ready to urge its armies against 
Vienna, when England remained, and that only from oppo- 
sition to the Bourbons, the only support of the Hapsburgs, 
there was established within five years the permanent 
strength of Frederick the Great and the new factor of 
Prussian Power: a complete contempt for the old rules of 
honour in negotiation and for the old rules of contract in 
dynastic relations had been crowned by a complete success. 

This advent, when every exception and cross-influence 
is forgotten, will remain the chief moral, and therefore, the 
chief political fact of the eighteenth century. By the end 
of the year 1745 Silesia was finally abandoned by Austria; 
the Prussian soldier and his atheist theory had compassed 
the first mere conquest of European territory which had 
been achieved by any European power since first Europe 
was organised into a family of Christian communities. 
It had been advanced for the first time that Europe was 



THE DIPLOMATIC REVOLUTION 13 

not one, but that some unit of it might overbear and rule 
another by arms alone; that there was no common standard 
nor any unseen avenger upon appeal. That theory had 
appealed to arms and had conquered. 

Within three years the international turmoil, of which this 
catastrophe was immeasurably the greatest result, was 
subjected to a sort of settlement. One of those general 
committees of all Europe with which our own time is so 
familiar v/as summoned to Aix-la-Chapelle; representa- 
tives of the various Powers confirmed or modified the 
results of a group of wars, and in the autumn of 1748 
affixed their signatures to a complete arrangement which 
was well known to be unstable, ephemeral, and insincere, 
but which was yet of tremendous import, for it marked 
(though in no dramatic manner) the end of an old world. 

As the plenipotentiaries left their accomplished work 
and strolled out of the room which had received them, they 
were still grouped together by such w^eak and complex ties 
as the interests of individual governments might decide. 
When they met again after the next brief cycle of war, these 
men were arranged in a true order and sat opposing; for 
England, Prussia, and experiment of schism on the one 
side; for the belt of endurance on the other. Since that 
cleavage these two prime bodies, disguised under a hundred 
forms and hidden and confused by a welter of incidental and 
secondary forces, have remained opposing, attempting with 
fluctuating success each to determine the general fortunes 
of the world. They will so continue balanced and opposing 
until perhaps — by the action of some power neither of war 
nor of diplomacy — unity may be re-established and Europe 
may again live. 

Of the men who so strolled out of the room at Aix one 



14 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

only, still young, had grasped in silence the necessity of the 
great change; he saw that Vienna and Paris must in the 
next struggle stand together and defend together their 
common civilisation and their resisting Faith. He not only 
perceived the advent of this great reversal in the traditions 
of the chanceries; he designed to aid it himself, to mould 
it, and to determine its character. That he could then 
perceive of how large a movement his action was to be 
a part no historian can pretend, for at the time no one 
could grasp more than the momentary issue, and this 
man's very profession made it necessary for him, as for 
every other diplomat, to see clearly immediate things and 
to abandon distant speculation. But though his work 
was greater than himself and far greater than his intention, 
yet he deserves a very particular attention; for this young 
man of thirty-six was Kaunitz, and he, for a whole genera- 
tion, was Austria. 

In so determining to effect an alliance between the Haps- 
burgs and their secular enemy, Kaunitz equally determined, 
unknown to himself, the whole fortunes of Marie Antoinette ; 
she, years later, when she came to be born to the Imperial 
house was, even in childhood, the pledge he needed. It is 
Kaunitz who stands forever behind the life of Marie 
Antoinette, like a writer behind the creature in his book. 
It is he who designs her marriage, who uses her without 
mercy for the purposes of his policy at Versailles; he is 
the author of her magnificence and of her intrigue, he is 
then also indirectly the author of her fall, which, in his 
obscure and failing old age, he heard of far away, partially 
comprehended, and just survived. 

Kaunitz was the original of our modern diplomatists. 
In that epoch of governing families not a few nobles were 



THE DIPLOMATIC REVOLUTION 15 

flattered to be called "the Coachmen of Europe": he alone 
merited the cant term. He served a sovereign whose armies 
were constantly defeated; he was the adviser of a mere 
crown — and that crown worn by a woman ; in a time 
when the divergent races of the Danube were first astir, 
he had at his command or for his support neither a national 
tradition nor any strong instrument of war, yet, by per- 
sonal genius, by tenacity, and by a wide lucidity of vision, 
he discovered and completed a method of "government 
through foreign relations" which was almost independent 
of national feeling or of armed strength. 

An absence of natural violence, as of all common emotions, 
was characteristic of Kaunitz. He disdained the vulgar 
pomp of silence; he talked continually; he knew the 
strength and secrecy of men who can be at once verbose 
and deliberate. Nor could his fluency have deceived any 
careful observer into a suspicion of weakness, for his curved 
thin nose and prominent peaked chin, his arched eyebrows, 
his Sclavonic type, ready and courageous, his hard, pale 
eyes, showed nothing but purpose and execution; and as 
his tall figure stalked round the billiard tables at evening, 
his very recreation seemed instinct with plans. 

The abounding energy which drove him to success 
revealed itself in a thousand ways, and chiefly in this, 
that in the career of diplomacy, where all individuality is 
regarded with dread, he pushed his personal tastes beyond 
the eccentric. Thus he had a mania against all gesticula- 
tion, and he would present at every conference the singular 
spectacle of a man chattering and disputing unceasingly and 
eagerly, yet keeping his hands quite motionless all the 
while. Again, when he entered the great houses of Europe 
and dined with men to influence whom was to conduct 



16" MARIE ANTOINETTE 

the world, he did not hesitate to bring with him his own 
dessert, which when he had eaten he would, to the great 
disgust of embassies, elaborately wash his teeth at 
table. In the midst of the hardest toil he was so foppish as 
to wear various wigs — now brown, now white, now auburn. 
He was a constant traveller, familiar with every capital 
in Western Europe, yet he so loathed fresh air that he 
would not pass from his carriage to a palace door unless his 
mouth were covered. He was a dandy who, in drawing- 
rooms loaded with scent and flowers, loudly protested against 
all perfume; a gentleman who, when cards were the only 
pastime of the rich, expressed a detestation of all hazard; 
a courtier who, amidst all the extravagances of etiquette 
of the eighteenth century, barely bowed to the greatest 
sovereigns, and who, on the stroke of eleven, would 
abruptly leave the Emperor without a word. 

Such marks of an intense initiative, detachment and 
pride were tolerated in the earlier part of his life with 
amusement on account of the affection he could inspire; 
later they were regarded with ill ease, and at last with a 
sort of awe, when it was known that his intelligence could 
entrap no matter what combination of antagonist. This 
intelligence, and the single devotion by which such natures 
are invariably compelled, were both laid at the feet of Maria 
Theresa. 

He was older than his Empress by some seven years; 
there lay between them just that space which makes for 
equality and comprehension between a man and a woman. 
The year of her marriage had coincided with that of his 
own; he had come at twenty-five to the court of this 
young sovereign of eighteen. She had recognised — with 
a wisdom that never failed her long and active life — how 



THE DIPLOMATIC REVOLUTION 17 

just and general was his view of Europe, and it was from 
this moment that her interests and her career were entrusted 
to his genius. He had already studied in three universities, 
had refused the clerical profession to which his Canonry of 
Cunster introduced him, and had travelled in the Nether- 
lands, in France, in England, and in Italy, where he was 
made Aulic Councillor, and enfeoffed, as it were, to the 
palace. 

His abilities had not long to await their opportunity. 
It was but four years after Maria Theresa's marriage and 
his own that she succeeded to the throne and possessions 
of the Hapsburgs : then it was the sudden advent of Prussia, 
to which I have alluded, began the great change. 

Maria Theresa's succession was in doubt, not in point of 
right, but because her sex and the condition in which her 
father had left his army and his treasury gave an oppor- 
tunity to the rivals of Austria, and notably to France. 

Europe was thus passing through one of those crises 
of instability during which every chancery discounts and 
yet dreads a universal war, when the magazine was fired 
by one who had nothing to lose but honour. Frederick 
of Prussia was the warmest in acknowledging the title of 
Maria Theresa; he accepted her claims, guaranteed the 
integrity of her possessions, and suddenly invaded them. 

From the ordering of that march of Frederick's into 
Silesia — from the close, that is, of the year 1740 — Kaunitz, 
a man not yet in his thirtieth year, was at work to repair the 
Empire and to restore the equilibrium of Europe. Upon 
the whole he succeeded; for though the magnitude of the 
Revolutionary Wars has dwarfed his period, and though the 
complete modern transformation of society has made 
such causes seem remote, yet (as it is the thesis of these 



18 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

pages to maintain) Kaunitz unconsciously preserved the 
unity of Europe. 

In the beginning of the struggle he had already saved 
the interests of Maria Theresa in the petty Italian courts. 
At Florence, at Rome, at Turin, at Brussels, his mastery 
continued to increase. In his thirty-sixth year he was 
ambassador to London — he concluded, as we have seen, 
the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle ; by his fortieth he had been 
appointed to Paris, and that action by which he will chiefly 
be remembered had begun. He had seen, as I have said, 
the necessity for an alliance between the two great Catholic 
Powers. Within the two years of his residence in Paris he 
had successfully raised the principle of such a revolution in 
policy and as successfully maintained its secrecy. A task 
which would have seemed wholly vain had he communicated 
it to others, one which would have seemed impossible even 
to those whom he might have convinced, was achieved. To 
his lucid and tenacious intellect the matter in hand was but 
the bringing forth of a tendency already in existence; he 
saw the Austro-French alliance lying potentially in the 
circumstances of his time; his business was but to define 
and realize it. 

In such a mood did he take up the Austrian embassy in 
Paris. He was well fitted for the work he had conceived. 
The magnificence which he displayed in his palace in the 
French capital was calculated indeed to impress rather than 
to attract the formal court of Versailles ; that magnificence 
was the product of his personal tastes rather than of his 
power of intrigue, but the details of his over-ostentatious 
household were well suited to those whom he had designed 
to capture. The French language was his own; Italian, 
though he spoke it well, was foreign to him; the German 




MARIA THERESA 

From the tapestry portrait woven for Marie Antoinette 
and recently restored to Versailles 



THE DIPLOMATIC REVOLUTION 19 

dialects he knew but ill and hardly used at all. His habits 
were French, to the end of his long life French literature 
was his only reading, and his clothes, to their least part, 
must come from the hands of the French. 

He moved, therefore, in that world of Paris and Ver- 
sailles (as did, later, his pupil, Mercy-d 'Argenteau) rather 
as a native than a foreigner. Even if the alliance had been 
as artificial as it was natural, he would have carried his 
point. As it was, he left Paris in 1753 to assume the Prime 
Ministry at Vienna, with the certitude that, when next 
Frederick of Prussia had occasion to break his word, the 
wealth and the arms of the Bourbons would be ranged upon 
the Austrian side. 

Upon that major pivot all the schemes of Vienna must 
turn at his dictation. Every marriage must be contrived 
so as to fall in with the projected alliance; every action 
must be subordinated to the arrangement which would prove, 
as he trusted, the supreme hope of the dynasty. To this 
one project he directed every power within him or beneath 
his hand, and to this he was ready, when the time should 
come, to devote the fortunes of any member of the Royal 
House save its sovereign or its heir. To this aspect of Europe, 
long before the termination of his mission in Paris, he had 
not so much persuaded as formed the mind of Maria Theresa. 

The great and salutary soul of that woman explains in 
part what were to be the fortunes of her youngest child. Not 
that Marie Antoinette inherited either the opportunities 
or the full excellence of her mother, but that there ran 
through the impatient energy and unfruitful graciousness 
of the Queen of France a flavour of that which had lent a 
disciplined power and a conscious dignity to the middle 
age of Maria Theresa. 



20 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

The body of the Empress was strong. Its strength 
enabled her to bear without fatigue the ceaseless work of 
her oflSce and in the midst of child-bearing to direct with 
exactitude the affairs of a troubled State. That strength 
of hers was evident in her equal temper, her rapid judgment, 
her fixed choice of men; it Was evident also in her firm 
tread and in her carriage, and even as she sat upon a chair 
at evening she seemed to be governing from a throne. 

A growing but uniform capacity informed her life. She 
had known the value not only of industry but also of enthu- 
siasm, and had saved her throne in its greatest peril by her 
sudden and passionate appeal to the Hungarians. It was 
this instinctive science of hers that had disarmed Kaunitz. 
If he allowed her to suggest what he had already determined, 
if he permitted her to be the first to Write down the scheme 
of the Diplomatic Revolution he had conceived, and to send 
it down to history as her creation rather than his own, it was 
not the desire to flatter her that moved him but a recogni- 
tion of her due. She it Was that sent him to Paris and 
she that superintended the weaving of the loom he had 
arranged. 

Her dark and pleasing eyes, sparkling and strong, con- 
trolled him in so far as he was controlled by any outer 
influence, for he recognized in them the Caesarian spirit. 

Her largeness pleased him. When she played at cards, 
she played for fortunes; when she rode, she rode with 
magnificence; when she sang, her voice, though high, 
was loud, untramelled, and full; when she drove abroad, 
it was with splendour and at a noble turn of speed. 

All this was greatly to the humour of Kaunitz, and he 
continued to serve his Empress with a zeal he would never 
have given to a mere ambition. In deference to her, all 



THE DIPLOMATIC REVOLUTION 21 

that he could control of his idiosyncrasies he controlled. 
His great bull-dog, which followed him to every other door, 
was kept from her palace. His abrupt speech, his failure 
to reply, his sudden and brief commands — all his manner 
— were mollified in consultation with his Queen. She, on 
her part, knew what were the limits to which so singular a 
nature could proceed in the matter of self-denial. She 
respected half his follies, and her servants often saw her 
from the courtyard shutting the windows, smiling, as he 
ran from his carriage, his mouth covered to screen it from 
the outer air. Her common sense and poise forgave in him 
alone extravagances she had little inclination to support 
in others. He respected in her, those depths of emotion, 
of simplicity, and of faith which in others he would have 
regarded as imbecilities ready for his high intelligence to use 
at will. 

It was neither incomprehensible to him nor displeasing 
that her temper should be warmer than his intelligence 
demanded. The increasing strength of her religion, the 
personal affections and personal distastes which she con- 
ceived, above all, the closeness of her devotion to her hus- 
band, completed, in the eyes of Kaunitz, a character whose 
dominions and dynasty he chose to serve and to confirm; 
for he perceived that what others imagined to be impedi- 
ments to her policy were but the reflection of her sex and of 
her health therein. 

Kaunitz saw in Frederick of Prussia a player of worthy 
skill. It was upon the death of that soldier that he gave 
vent to the one emotional display of his life; yet he per- 
mitted Maria Theresa to hate her rival with a hatred 
which Was not directed against his campaigning so much as 
against the narrow intrigue and bitterness of his evil mind. 



22 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

To Kaunitz, again, Catherine of Russia was nothing but 
a powerful rival or ally; yet he approved that Maria Theresa 
should speak of her as one speaks of the women of the 
streets, despising her not for her anabition but for her licence. 

To Kaunitz, Francis of Lorraine, the husband of the 
Empress, was a thing without Weight in the international 
game; yet he saw with a general understanding, and was 
glad to see in detail, the security of the imperial marriage. 

The singular happiness of Maria Theresa's wedded life 
was due to no greatness in Francis of Lorraine, but to his 
vivacity and good breeding, to his courtesy, to his refine- 
ment, and especially to his devotion. It suited her that 
he should ride and shoot so well. She loved the restrained 
intonation of his voice and the frankness of his face. 
She easily forgave his numerous and passing infidelities. 
The simplicity of his religion was her own, for her goodness 
was all German as his sincerity was all Western and French ; 
upon these two facts the opposing races touch when the 
common faith introduces the one to the other. Their house- 
hold, therefore, was something familiar and domestic. Its 
language was French, of a sort, because French was the 
language of Francis; but while he brought the clarity of 
Lorraine under that good roof, which covered what Goethe 
called "the chief bourgeois family of Germany," he brought 
to it none of the French hardness and precision, nor any of 
that cold French parade which was later to exasperate his 
daughter when she reigned at Versailles. He was a man 
who deighted in visits to his countryside, and who would 
have his carriage in town wait its turn with others at the 
opera doors. 

Maria Theresa was so wedded, served by such a Minister, 
in possession of and in authority over such a household dur- 



THE DIPLOMATIC REVOLUTION 23 

ing those seven years between the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle 
and the French Alliance, between 1748 and 1755. Those 
seven years were years of patience and of diplomacy, which 
were used to retrieve the disasters of her first bewildered 
struggle against Prussia and the new forces of Europe. 
They were the seven years of profound, if precarious, inter- 
national peace, when England was preparing her maritime 
supremacy, Prussia her full military tradition, the French 
monarchy, in the person of Louis XV., its rapid^dissolution 
through excess and through fatigue. They were the seven 
years which seemed to the superficial but acute observation 
of Voltaire to be the happiest of his age: a brief " Antonine" 
repose in which the arts flourish and ideas might flower 
and even grow to seeding. They were the seven years in 
which the voice of Rousseau began to be heard and in which 
was written the ''Essay upon Human Inequality." 

For the purposes of this story they were in particular the 
seven years during which Kaunitz, now widowed, working 
first as Ambassador in Paris, then as Prime Minister by the 
side of Maria Theresa at Vienna, achieved that compact 
with the Bourbons which was to restore the general traditions 
of the Continent and the fortunes of the House of Hapsburg. 

The period drew to a close : the plans for the alliance were 
laid, the last discussions were about to be engaged, when 
it was known, in the early summer of 1755, that the Empress 
was again with child. ^ ^ 



;/ 



/ 



/. 



% 



II 

BIRTH AND CHILDHOOD 

2nd NOVEMBER, 1755, TO THE AUTTOIN OF 1768 

A LL that summer of 1755 the intrigue — and its success 
/"% — proceeded. 

I have said that the design of Kaunitz was not 
so much to impose upon his time a new plan as to further 
a cUmax to which that time was tending. Accidents in 
Europe, in America, and upon the high seas conspired to 
mature the aUiance. 

Fighting broke out between the French and English 
outposts in the backwoods of the colonies. Two French 
ships had been engaged in a fog off the banks and cap- 
tured; later, a sharp panic had led the Cabinet in London 
to order a general Act of Piracy throughout the Atlantic 
against French commerce. It was a wild stroke, but it 
proved the first success of what was to become the most 
fundamentally successful war in the annals of Great Britain. 

In Versailles, an isolated and mournful man, fatigued 
and silent, who was in the last resort the governing power 
of France, delayed and delayed the inevitable struggle 
between his forces and the rising power of England. Louis 
XV. looked upon the World with an eye too experienced and 
too careless to consider honour. His clear and informed 
intelligence would contemplate — though it could not rem- 
edy — the effects of his own decline and of his failing 
will. He felt about him in the society he ruled, and within 



BIRTH AND CHILDHOOD 25 

himself also, something moribund. France at this moment 
gave the impression of a great palace, old and in part ruined. 
That impression of France had seized not only upon her 
own central power, but upon foreign observers as well; 
the English squires had received it, and the new Prussian 
soldiers. In Vienna it was proposed to use the declining 
French monarchy as a great prop, and in using it to 
strengthen and to revivify the Austrian Empire until the 
older order of Europe should be restored. Louis XV., 
sitting apart and watching the dissolution of the national 
vigour and of his own, put aside the approach of arms with 
such a gesture as might use a man of breeding whom in 
some illness violence had disturbed. Thus as late as 
August, when his sailors had captured an English ship of 
the line, he ordered its release. The war was well ablaze 
and yet he would consent to no formal declaraLion of it; 
Austria watched his necessities. 

It was in September that Maria Theresa sent word to 
her ambassador in Paris — the old and grumbling but 
pliant Stahrenberg, that the match might be set to the train : 
in a little house under the terrace at Bellevue, a house 
from whose windows all Paris may be seen far away below, 
the secret work went on. 

It has been asserted that the Empress in her anxiety wrote 
to the Pompadour and attempted, by descending to so 
direct a flattery of Louis XV. 's mistress, to hasten that 
King's adhesion to her design. The accusation is false, and 
the document upon which it is based a forgery; but the 
Austrian ambassador was Maria Theresa's mouthpiece with 
that kindly, quiet, and all-powerful woman. It was she who 
met him day after day in the little house, and when she 
retired to give place to the Cardinal de Bernis, that Minister 



26 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

found the alliance already fully planned between Stahren- 
berg and the Pompadour. Louis XV. alone was still reluc- 
tant. Great change, great action of any sort, was harsh 
to him. He would not believe the growing rumour that 
Frederick of Prussia was about to desert his alliance and to 
throw his forces on to the side of the English power. Louis 
XV. attempted, not without a sad and patient skill, to 
obtain equilibrium rather than defence. He would consider 
an arrangement with Vienna only if it might include a 
peaceful understanding with Berlin. 

As, during October^ these negotiations matured so slowly 
in France, in Vienna the Empress awaited through that 
month the birth of her child. She jested upon it with a 
Catholic freedom, laid wagers upon its sex (and later won 
them), discussed what sponsors should be bidden, and 
decided at last upon the King and Queen of Portugal; to 
these, in the last days of October, her messengers brought 
the request, and it was gladly accepted in their capital of 
Lisbon. Under such influences was the child to be born. 

The town of Lisbon had risen, in the first colonial efforts 
of Portugal, to a vast importance. True, the Portuguese 
did not, as others have done, attach their whole policy to 
possessions over-sea, nor rely for existence upon the suprem- 
acy of their fleet, but the evils necessarily attendant upon a 
scattered commercial empire decayed their military power 
and therefore at last their commerce itself. The capital 
was no longer, in the Arab phrase, "the city of the Chris- 
tian"; it Was long fallen from its place as the chief port 
of the Atlantic when, in these last days of October,1755, the 
messengers of the Empress entered it and were received; 
but it was still great, overlooking the superb anchorage 
which brought it into being, and presenting to the traveller 



BIRTH AND CHILDHOOD 27 

perhaps half the population which it had boasted in the 
height of its prosperity. It was a site famous for shocks of 
earthquake, which (by a coincidence) had visited it since 
the decline of its ancient power; but of these no more 
affair had been made than is common with natural adven- 
tures. Its narrow streets and splendid, if not majestic, 
churches still stood uninjured. 

The valley upon which stood the commercial centre of 
Lisbon is formed of loose clay; the citadel and the portion 
which to this day recalls the older city, of limestone; and 
the line which limits the two systems is a sharp one. But 
though the diversity of such a soil lent to these tremors an 
added danger, they had passed without serious attention 
for three or four generations; they had not affected the 
architecture of the city nor marred its history. In this year, 
1755, they had already been repeated, but in so mild a 
fashion that no heed was taken of them. 

By All-Hallowe'en the heralds had accomplished their 
mission, the Court had retired to the palace of Belem, 
which overlooks the harbour, and the suburbs built high 
beyond that Roman bridge which has bequeathed to its 
valley the Moorish name of Alcantara. The city, as the 
ambassadors of Maria Theresa and the heralds of her 
daughter's birth were leaving it, was awaiting under the 
warm and easy sun of autumn the feast of the morrow. 

In the morning of that All Saints, a little after eight, the 
altars stood prepared, the populace had thronged into the 
churches ; the streets also were already noisy with the opening 
of a holiday; the ships' crews were ashore; only the quays 
were deserted. Everywhere High Mass had begun. But 
just at nine — at the hour when the pressure of the crowds, 
both within the open doors of the churches and without 



28 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

them, was at its fullest — the earth shook. The awful 
business lasted perhaps ten seconds. When its crash was 
over an imniense multitude of the populace and a third 
of the material city had perished. 

The great mass of the survivors ran to the deserted 
quays, where an open sky and broad spaces seemed to afford 
safety from the fall of walls. They saw the sea withdrawn 
from the shore of the wdde harbour; they saw next a wave 
form and rise far out in the landlocked gulf, and immediately 
it returned in an advancing heap of water straight and high 
— as high and as straight as the houses of the sea front. It 
moved with the pace of a gust or of a beam of light toward 
the shore. The thousands crammed upon the quays had 
barely begun their confused rush for the heights when this 
thing Was upon them; it swirled into the narrow streets, 
tearing down the shaken walls and utterly sweeping out 
the maimed, the dying and the dead whom the earthquake 
had left in the city. Then, when it had surged up and 
broken against the higher land, it dragged back again into 
the bay, carrying with it the wreck of the town and leaving 
strewn on the mud of its retirement small marbles, carven 
wood, stuffs, fuel, provisions, and everywhere the drowned 
corpses of animals and of men. During these moments 
perhaps twenty, perhaps thirty thousand were destroyed. 

Two hours passed. They were occupied in part by pil- 
lage, in part by stupefaction, to some extent by repression 
and organization. But before noon the accompaniment 
of such disasters appeared. Fire was discovered first 
in one quarter of the city, then in another, till the whole 
threatened to be consumed. The disorder increased. 
Pombal, an atheist of rapid and decided thought, dominated 
the chaos and controlled it. He held the hesitating court 



BIRTH AND CHILDHOOD 29 

to the ruins of the city; he organized a police; as the early 
evening fell over the rising conflagration he had gibbets 
raised at one point after another, and hung upon them 
scores of those who had begun to loot the ruins and the 
dead. 

The night was filled with the light and the roar of the 
flames until, at the approach of morning, when the fires 
had partly spent themselves and the cracked and charred 
walls yet standing could be seen more clearly in the dawn, 
some in that exhausted crowd remembered that it was the 
Day of the Dead, and how throughout Catholic Europe the 
requiems would be singing and the populace of all the 
cities but this would be crowding to the graves of those 
whom they remembered. 

That same day, which in Lisbon overlooked the cloud 
of smoke still pouring from broken shells of houses, saw 
in Vienna, as the black processions returned from their 
cemeteries, the birth of the child. 



Maria Theresa, whose vigour had been constant through 
so many trials, suffered grievously in this last child-bed of 
hers. She was in her thirty-seventh year. The anxiety 
and the plotting of the past months, the fear of an approach- 
ing conflict, had worn her. It was six weeks before she 
could hear Mass in her chapel; and meanwhile, in spite of 
the oflficial, and especially the popular, rejoicing which 
followed the birth of the princess, a sort of hesitation hung 
over the court. Francis of Lorraine was oppressed by 
premonitions. With that taint of superstition which his 
faith condemned, but which the rich can never wholly 
escape, he caused the baby's horoscope to be drawn. The 



30 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

customary banquet was foregone. The dreadful news from 
Lisbon added to the gloom, and something silent sur- 
rounded the palace as the days shortened into winter. 

With the New Year a more usual order was re-established. 
The life of the Court had returned; the first fortnight of 
January passed in open festivities, beneath the surface of 
which the steady diplomatic pressure for the French alliance 
continued. It reached an unexpectedly rapid conclusion. 
Upon the sixteenth of January the King of Prussia suddenly 
admitted to the French ambassador at Berlin that he had 
broken faith with Louis and that the Prussian minister in 
London had signed a treaty with England. For a month 
a desperate attempt continued to prevent the enormous 
consequences which must follow the public knowledge of 
the betrayal. The aversion of Louis to all new action, his 
mixture of apathy and of judgment, led him, through his 
ambassador, to forego the insult and to cling to the illusion 
of peace, but Frederick himself destroyed that illusion. 
His calculation had been the calculation of a soldier in whom 
the clear appreciation of a strategical moment, the resolu- 
tion and courage necessary to use it, and an impotence of 
the chivalric functions combined to make such decisions 
absolute. It was the second manifestation of that moral 
perversion which has lent for two hundred years such 
nervous energy to Prussia, and of which the Occupation 
of Silesia was the first, Bismark's forgery at Ems the 
latest — and probably the final — example : for Europe 
can always at last expel a poison. 

Frederick, I say, was resolved upon war. He met 
every proposal for reconciliation with German jests some- 
what decadent and expressed in imperfect French, which 
was his daily language. By the end of February, 1756, 



BIRTH AND CHILDHOOD 31 

the attempt to keep the peace of Europe had failed, and 
Louis XV., driven by circumstance and necessity, had at 
last accepted the design of Maria Theresa and of Kaunitz. 
The treaty would have been signed in March had not the 
illness of the French Minister, the Cardinal De Bernis 
intervened; as it was, the signatures were affixed to the 
document on the first of May. By summer all Europe was 
in arms. The little Archduchess, who was later to lay down 
her life in the chain of consequences which proceeded from 
that signing, was six months old. 

The first seven years of Marie Antoinette's life were, 
therefore, those of the Seven Years' War. 

As her mind emerged into consciousness, the rumours 
she heard around her, magnified by the gossip of the ser- 
vants to whom she was entrusted, were rumours of sterile 
victories and of malignant defeats; in the recital of either 
there mingled perpetually the name of the Empire and 
the name of Bourbon which she was to bear. She could 
just walk when the whole of Cumberland's army broke 
down before the French advance and accepted terms at 
Kloster-Seven. Her second birthday cake was hardly 
eaten before Frederick had neutralised this capitulation 
by destroying the French at Rosbach. The year which saw 
the fall of Quebec and the French disasters in India, was 
that with which her earliest memories were associated. She 
could remember Kunersdorf, the rejoicings and the confi- 
dent belief that the Protestant agression was repelled. Her 
fifth, her sixth, her seventh years — the years, that is, during 
which the first clear experience of life begins — proved the 
folly of that confidence: her eighth was not far advanced 
when the whole of this noisy business was concluded by the 
Peace of Paris and the Treaty of Herbertsburg. 



32 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

The war appeared indecisive or a failure. The original 
theft of Silesia was confirmed to Prussia; the conquest of 
the French colonies to England. In their defensive against 
the menace to which all European traditions were exposed, 
the courts of Vienna and Versailles had succeeded; in 
their aggressive, which had the object of destroying that 
menace forever, they had failed. In failing in their aggres- 
sive, as a by-product of that failure, they had permitted the 
establishment of an English colonial system which at the 
time seemed of no great moment, but which was destined 
ultimately to estrange this country from the politics of Europe 
and to submit it to fantastic changes ; to make its population 
urban and proletariat, to increase immensely the wealth of 
its oligarchy, and gravely to obscure its military ideals. In 
the success of their defensive, as by-products of that success, 
they had achieved two things equally unexpected: they 
had preserved for ever the South-German spirit, and had 
thus checked in a remote future the organization of the 
whole German race by Prussia and the triumph over it 
of Prussian materialism; they had preserved to France an 
intensive domestic energy which was shortly to transform 
the World. 

The period of innocence, then, and of growth, which 
succeeds a child's first approach to the Sacraments, corre- 
sponded in the life of Marie Antoinette with the peace that 
followed these victories and these defeats. The space 
between her seventh and her fourteenth years might have 
been filled, in the leisure of the Austrian Court, with every 
advantage and every grace. By an accident, not uncon- 
nected with her general fate, she was allowed to run wild. 

That her early childhood should have been neglected 
is easier to understand. The war occupied all her mother's 



BIRTH AND CHILDHOOD 33 

energies. She and her elder sister Caroline were the babies 
whose elder brother was already admitted to affairs of 
State. It was natural that no great anxiety upon their 
education should have been felt in such times. The child 
had been put out to nurse with the wife of a small lawyer 
of sorts, one Weber, whose son — the foster-brother of 
the Queen — has left a pious and inaccurate memorial of 
her to posterity. Here she first learnt the German tongue, 
which was to be her only idiom during her childhood; here, 
also, she first heard her name under the form of "Maria 
Antoinetta," a form which was to be preserved until her 
marriage was planned. 

Such neglect, or rather such domesticity, would have 
done her character small hurt if it had ceased with her 
earliest years and with the conclusion of the peace; it was 
no better and no worse than that which the children of all 
the wealthy enjoy in the company of inferiors until their 
education begins. But the little archduchess, even when 
she had reached the age when character forms, was still 
undisciplined and at large. There was found for her and 
Caroline a worthy and easy-going governess in the Countess 
of Brand Weiss, an amiable and careless woman, who 
perhaps could neither teach nor choose teachers and who 
certainly did not do so. 

All the warmer part of the year the children spent at 
Schoenbriinn; it was only in the depth of winter that they 
visited the capital. But whether at Court or in the country 
they Were continually remote from the presence and the 
strong guidance of Maria Theresa. 

The Empress saw them formally once a week; a doctor 
daily reported upon their health; for the rest, all control 
was abandoned. The natural German of Marie Antoinette's 



34 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

babyhood continued (perhaps in the very accent of her 
domestics) to be the medium of her speech in her teens, 
and — what was of more importance for the future — not 
only of her speech but of her thought also. In womanhood 
and after a long residence abroad the mechanical part 
of this habit was forgotten; its spirit remained. What 
she read — if she read anything — we cannot tell. Her 
music alone was watched. Her deportment was naturally 
graceful as her breeding was good; but the seeds of no 
culture were sown in her, nor so much as the elements of 
self-control. Her sprightliness was allowed an indulgence 
in every whim, especially in a talent for mockery. She 
acquired, and she desired to acquire, nothing. No healthy 
child is fitted by nature for application and study; upon 
all such must continuous habits be enforced — to her they 
were not so much as suggested. A perpetual instability 
became part of her mind, and, unhappily, this permanent 
weakness was so veiled by an inherited poise and by a happy 
heart, that her mother, in her rare observations, passed it 
by. Before Marie Antoinette was grown a woman that 
inner instability had come to colour all her mind; it 
remained in her till the eve of her disasters. 

It is often discovered, when an eager childhood is left 
too much to its own ruling, that the mind will, of its own 
energy, turn to the cultivation of some one thing. Thus, 
in Versailles, the boyhood of the lonely child, who was later 
to be her husband, had turned for an interest to maps and 
had made them a passion. With her it was not so. The 
whole of her active and over-nourished life lacked the 
ballast of so much as a hobby. She was precisely of that 
kind to whom a wide, a careful, and a conventional training 
is most useful; precisely that training was denied her. 



BIRTH AND CHILDHOOD 35 

The disasters and what was w^orse, the unfruitfulness 
of the war had not daunted Maria Theresa, but her plans 
were in disarray. The two years that succeeded the peace 
produced no definite poHcy. No step was taken to con- 
firm the bond with France or to secure the future, w^hen there 
fell upon her the blow of her husband's death; he had fallen 
under a sudden stroke at Innsbruck, during the wedding 
feast of his son, leaving to her and to his children not only 
the memory of his peculiar charm but also a sort of testament 
or rule of life which remains a very noble fragment of 
Christian piety. 

Before he had set out he remembered his youngest 
daughter; he asked repeatedly for the child and she was 
brought to him. He embraced her closely, with some pre- 
sentiment of evil, and he touched her hair; then as he rode 
away among his gentlemen he said, with that clear candour 
which inhabits both the blood and the wine of Lorraine, 
"Gentlemen, God knows how much I desired to kiss that 
child!" She had been his favourite; there was a close 
affinity between them. She was left to her mother, there- 
fore, as a pledge and an inheritance, and Maria Theresa, 
whose mourning became passionate and remained so, was 
ready to procure for this daughter the chief advantages of 
the world. 

The loss of her husband, while it filled her with an 
enduring sorrow, also did something to rouse and to inspire 
the Empress with the force that comes to such natures when 
they find themselves suddenly alone. The little girl upon 
whom her ambitions were already fixed, the French alliance 
which had been, as it were, the greatest part of herself, 
mixed in her mind. Maria Theresa had long connected 
in some vague manner the confirmation of the alliance with 



36 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

some Bourbon marriage — in what way precisely or by 
what plan we cannot tell; her ambassador has credited her 
with many plans. It is probable that none were developed 
when, a few weeks after the Emperor's death, there hap- 
pened something to decide her. The son of Louis XV., the 
Dauphin, was taken ill and died before the end of the year 
1765. He left heir to the first throne in Europe his son, 
a lanky, silent, nervous lad of eleven, and that lad was heir 
to a man nearer sixty than fifty, worn with pleasure of a 
fastidious kind, and with the despair that accompanies the 
satisfaction of the flesh. A great eagerness Was apparent 
at Versailles to plan at once a future marriage for this boy 
and to secure succession. Maria Theresa determined that 
this succession should reside in children of her own blood. 

Nationality was a conception somewhat foreign to her, 
and as yet of no great strength in her mixed and varied 
dominions. How powerful it had ever been in France, 
what a menace it provided for the future of the French 
Monarchy, she could not perceive. Of the silent boy 
himself, the new heir, she knew only what her ambassador 
told her, and she cared little what he might be; but she 
saw clearly the Bourbons, a family as the Hapsburgs were 
a family, a bond in Catholic Europe with this boy the heir 
to their headship. She saw Versailles as the pinnacle 
still of whatever was regal (and therefore serious) in Europe. 
She determined to complete by a marriage the alliance 
already effected between that Court and her own. I 

She knew the material with which she had to deal : Louis ' 
XV., clear sighted, a great gentleman, sensual, almost I 
lethargic, loyal. She had understood the old nonentity 
of a Queen keeping her little place apart; the King's 
spinster-daughters struggling against the influence of mis- 




THE FIRST DAUPHIN 
The father of Louis XVI. 



BIRTH AND CHILDHOOD 37 

tresses. She understood the power of Choiseul, with whose 
active ministry the King had so long allowed his power to 
be merged; she knew how and why he was Austrian 
in policy, and she forgave him his attack upon the Church. 
Though Choiseul had not made the alliance he so used it, 
and above all so maintained it after the doubtful peace, that 
he almost seemed its author, as later he seemed — though 
he took so little action — the author of her daughter's 
marriage. She did not grudge the French Minister such 
honours. She weighed the historic grandeur of the royal 
house, and what she believed to be its certain future. She 
sketched in her mind, with Kaunitz at her side, the marriage 
of the two children as, years before, she had sketched the 
alliance. 

It was certain that Versailles would yield, because Ver- 
sailles was a man who, for all his lucidity and high training, 
never now stood long to one effort of the will; but just 
because Louis XV. had grown into a nature of that kind, it 
needed as active, as tenacious, and as subtle a mind as Maria 
Theresa's to bring him to write or to speak. Writing or 
speaking in so grave a matter meant direct action and 
consequence; he feared such responsibilities as others 
fear disaster. 

It is in the spirit of comedy to see this dignified and ample 
woman — perhaps the only worthy sovereign of her sex 
whom modern Europe has known — piloting through so 
critical a pass the long-determined fortunes of her daughter. 
There is the mother in all of it. That daughter had imper- 
illed her life. The child was the last of nine which she had 
borne to a husband whose light infidelities she now the 
more forgave, whose clear gentility had charmed her life, 
whose religion was her own, and in respect to whose memory 



38 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

she was rapidly passing from a devotion to an adoration. 
The day was not far distant when she would brood in the 
vault beside his grave. 

The old man Stahrenberg was yielding his place (with 
some grumbling) to Mercy. He was still the Austrian 
ambassador at Paris but his term was ending. Maria 
Theresa would perhaps in other times have spared his 
pride and would not have given him a task upon which he 
must labour, but which his successor would enjoy; but 
in the matter of her little archduchess she would spare no 
one. She had hinted her business to Stahrenberg before 
the Dauphin's death. The spring had hardly broken 
before she was pressing him to conclude it. Up to his very 
departure her importunity pursued him. When Mercy 
was on the point of entering his office (in the May of 1766) 
Stahrenberg, in the last letter sent to the Empress from Paris 
before his return, told her that her ship was launched. 
"She might," he wrote, "accept her project as assured, 
from the tone in which the King had spoken of it." 

Maria Theresa had too firm and too smiling and too 
luminous an acquaintance with the world to build upon 
such vague assurance. The dignity of the French throne 
was too great a thing to be grasped at. It must be achieved. 
A^Tien old Mme. Geoff rin passed through Vienna in that 
year Maria Antoinetta was kept in the background off 
the stage — but France Was cultivated. The baby, who 
was Louis XV. 's great-granddaughter, Theresa, Leopold's 
daughter, was presented to that old and wonderful hour- 
geoise and made much of. They joked about taking her 
to France; another baby, after all not much older, only 
eight years older, was going to that place in her time. 

And, meanwhile, the common arts by which women of 



BIRTH AND CHILDHOOD 39 

birth perfect their plans for their family were practised 
in the habitual round. The little girl's personality, all 
gilded and framed, was put in the window of the Haps- 
burgs. She was wild perhaps, but so good-hearted! In 
the cold winter you heard of (all winters are cold in Vienna) 
•she came up in the drawing-room where the family sat 
together and begged her mother to accept of all her savings 
for the poor — fifty-five ducats ! 

Little Mozart had come in to play one night. He had 
slipped upon the unaccustomed polish of the floor. The 
little archduchess, when all others smiled, had alone pitied 
and lifted him ! Maria Theresa met the French ambassador 
and told him in the most indifferent way how her youngest, 
when she was asked whom (among so many nations) she 
would like to rule, had said, "The French, for they had 
Henri IV. the good and Louis XIV. the great." Weary 
though he was of such conventionalities, the ambassador 
was bound by the honour of his place to repeat them. 

There still stood, however, in this summer of 1766, 
between the Empress's plan and its fruition a power as 
feminine, as perspicuous, and as exact in calculation as 
her own. The widow of the Dauphin, the mother of the 
new heir at Versailles, opposed the match. 

She would not retire, as the Queen, her mother-in-law, had 
done, into dignity and nothingness, nor would she admit — 
so tenacious of the past are crowns — that the Bourbons 
and the Hapsburgs had all the negotiations between them. 
She was of the Saxon House, and though it was but small — 
a northern bastion as it were, of the Catholic Houses — yet 
she had inherited the tradition of monarchy, and she might, 
but for her husband's sudden death, have inherited Ver- 
sailles itself. She was still young, vigorous and German. 



40 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

She had determined not only that her son, the new heir, 
should marry into her house — should marry his own 
cousin, her niece — but that he should marry as she his 
mother chose, and not as the Hapsburgs chose. He was at 
that moment (in 1766) not quite twelve; the bride whom 
she would disappoint not quite eleven years old! But her 
plan was active and tenacious, her readiness alive, when 
in the beginning of the following year, in March, 1767, 
she, in her turn died, and with her death that obstacle to 
the fate of the little archduchess also failed. 

With every date, as you mark each, it will be the more 
apparent that the barriers which opposed Marie Antoinette's 
approach to the French throne, failed each in turn at the 
climax of its resistance, and that her way to such eminence 
and such an end was opened by a number of peculiar 
chances, all adjutants of doom. 

The House of Hapsburg was never a crowned nationality ; 
it was and is a crowned family and nothing more. Its 
States were and are attached to it by no common bond. 
There is no such thing as Austria: the Hapsburgs are the 
reality of that Empire. The French Bourbons were, upon 
the contrary, the chiefs of a nation peculiarly conscious of 
its unity and jealous of its past. Their greatness lay only 
in the greatness of the compact quadrilateral they governed 
and of the finished language of their subjects, and in the 
achievements of the national temper. Such conditions 
favoured to the utmost the scheme of Maria Theresa, not 
only in the detail of this marriage, but in all that successful 
management of the French alliance which survived her 
own death and was the chief business of her reign. She 
could be direct in every plan, unhampered, considering 
only the fortunes of her house; Louis XV., and his Ministers, 



BIRTH AND CHILDHOOD 41 

as later his grandson, were trammelled by the complexity 
of a national life of which they were themselves a part. 

Versailles had not declared itself: Vienna pressed. It 
was in March that active opposition within the Court had 
died with the mother of the heir. Within a month the 
French ambassador at Vienna wrote home that "the mar- 
riage was in the air": but the King had not spoken. 

In that summer, as though sure of her final success, the 
Empress threw a sort of prescience of France and of high 
fortunes over the nursery at Schoenbriinn. The amiable 
Brandweiss disappeared ; the severe and unhealthy Lorchen- 
feld replaced her. 

The' French (and baptismal form) of the child's name, 
"Antoinette," was ordered to be used: still Versailles 
remained dumb. 

In the autumn the parallels of the siege were so far 
advanced that a direct assault could be made on poor 
Dufort, the advanced work of the Bourbons, their ambassa- 
dor at Vienna. 

Dufort had been told very strictly to keep silent. He 
suffered a persecution. Thus he was standing one evening 
by the card-tables talking to his Spanish colleague, wdien 
the Empress came up and said to this last boldly: "You 
see my daughter, sir ? I trust her marriage will go well ; 
we can talk of it the more freely that the French ambassa- 
dor here does not open his lips." 

The child's new governess was next turned on to the 
embarrassed man to pester him with the recital of her 
charge's virtues. The approaching marriage of her elder 
sister, Caroline with the Bourbons of Naples was dangled 
before Dufort. 

The play continued for a year. Louis XV. bade his 



42 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

minister get the girl's portrait, but "not show himself too 
eager." He is reprimanded even for his courtesies, and 
all the while Dufort must stand the fire of the Court of 
Vienna and its exaggerated deference to him and its 
occasional reproaches! Choiseul was anxious to see the 
business ended. Dufort was as ready (and as weary) 
as could have been the Empress herself, but the slow balance 
of Louis XV. stood between them all and their goal. 

In the summer of the next year, 1768, the Empress's eldest 
son, Joseph, now associated with her upon the throne, 
determined to press home and conclude. It was the first 
time that this man's narrow energy pressed the Bourbons 
to determine and to act; it was not to be the last. He w^as 
destined so to initiate action in the future upon two critical 
occasions and largely to determine the fortunes of his 
sister's married life and final tragedy. 

He wrote to Louis XV. a rambling letter, chiefly upon 
the marriage of yet another sister with the Duke of Parma. 
It wandered to the Bourbon marriage of Caroline; he men- 
tioned his own child, the great-granddaughter of the King. 
It was a letter demanding and attracting a familiar answer. 
It drew its quarry. Louis, answ^ering with his own hand 
and without emphasis, in a manner equally domestic and 
familiar, threw in a chance phrase: "... These 
marriages, your sister's with the Infante, that of the 
Dawphin. ..." In these casual four words a document 
had passed and the last obstacle was removed. 

The Empress turned from her major preoccupation to a 
minor one. This child of hers was to rule in France: she 
was now assured of the throne; she was near her thirteenth 
birthday — and she had been taught nothing. 



m 

TIIE ESPOUSALS 

THE fortnightly despatches from France customarily 
arrived at Vienna together in one bag and in the 
charge of one courier. The Empress would receive 
at once the letters of Mercy, the official correspondence, per- 
haps the note of a friend, and the very rare communications 
of royalty. In this same batch which brought that decisive 
letter of Louis XV. to her son, on the same day, therefore, 
in which she was first secure in her daughter's future, there 
also arrived the usual secret report from Mercy. This 
document contained a phrase too insignificant to detain her 
attention ; it mentioned the rumour of a new intrigue : the 
King showed attachment to a woman of low origin about 
him. It was an attachment that might be permanent. 
This news was immediately forgotten by Maria Theresa; 
it was a detail that passed from her mind. She perhaps 
remembered the name, which was "Du Barry." 



The Court of Vienna, permeated (as was then every 
wealthy society) with French culture, was yet wholly Ger- 
man in character. The insufficiency which had marked the 
training of the imperial children — especially of the youngest 
— was easily accepted by those to whom a happy domestic 
spirit made up for every other lack in the family. Of those 
who surrounded the little archduchess two alone, perhaps, 

43 



44 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

understood the grave difference of standard between such 
education as Maria Antoinetta had as yet received and the 
conversation of Versailles; but these two were Kaunitz and 
Maria Theresa, and short as was the time before them, 
they did determine to fit the child, in superficial things at 
least, for the world she was to enter and in a few years, to 
govern. They failed. 

Mercy was instructed to find a tutor who should come to 
Vienna and could accomplish the task. He applied to 
Choiseul. Choiseul in turn referred the matter to the best 
critic of such things, an expert in things of the world, the 
Archbishop of Toulouse. That prelate, Lomenie de Brienne, 
whose unscrupulous strength had judged men rightly upon 
so many occasions and had exactly chosen them for political 
tasks had in this case no personal appetite to gratify and 
was free to choose. A post was offered. His first thought 
was to obtain it for one who was bound to him, a protege 
and a dependant. He at once recommended a priest for 
whom he had already procured the librarianship of the 
Mazarin Collection, one Vermond. The choice was not 
questioned, and Vermond left to assume functions which he 
could hardly fulfil. 

There was needed here a man who should have been 
appalled by the ignorance he might discover in his charge, 
who should be little affected by grandeur, who should be 
self-v/illed, assertive, and rapid in method. One whom the 
Empress might have ridiculed or even disliked, but whom 
she would soon have discovered to be indispensable to her 
plan. Such a man would have tackled his business with 
an appreciation of its magnitude, would have insisted upon 
a full control, would have communicated by his vigour the 
atmosphere of French thought, careless of the German 



THE ESPOUSALS 45 

shrinking from the rigidity of the French mind. He would 
have worked long hours with little Marie Antoinette, he 
would have filled the days with his one object, he would 
have shocked and offended all, his pupil especially, and in 
a year he would have left her with a good grounding in the 
literature of his country, with an elementary but a clear 
scheme of the history and the political forces which she was 
later to learn in full, with an enlarged vocabulary, a good 
accent, and at least the ability to write clearly and to work 
a simple sum. His pupil would have been compelled to 
application ; her impulse would have been permanently har- 
nessed; she Would have learnt for life the value of a plan. 
Such a tutor would hardly have desired and would cer- 
tainly not have acquired a lasting influence later on at 
Versailles. His work would have been done in those 
critical years of childhood once and for all. He would 
probably have fallen into, poverty. In later years he 
might have appeared among the revolutionaries, but he 
would have found, face to face with the Revolution, a 
trained Queen who, thanks to him, could have dealt with 
circumstance. 

In the place of such a man Vermond arrived. 

He was a sober, tall, industrious priest of low birth; 
his father had let blood and perhaps pulled teeth for the 
needy. His reserve and quiet manners reposed upon a 
spirit that was incapable of ambition, but careful to secure 
ample means and to establish his family and himself in the 
secure favour of his employers. He was of middle age, 
a state into which he had entered early and was likely long 
to remain. His mind within was active and disciplined; its 
exterior effect was small. He thought to accomplish his 
mission if he was but regular in his reports, laborious in 



46 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

his own study, and, above all, tactful and subtle in handling 
the problem before him. 

To such a character was presented an exuberant child, 
growing rapidly, vivacious, somewhat proud, and hitherto 
unaccustomed to effort of any kind, a monkey for mimicry, 
clever at picking up a tune upon the keys, a tomboy shout- 
ing her German phrases down the corridors of Schoenbriinn, 
a fine little lady at Vienna — acting either part well. The 
light russet of her hair and her thick eyebrows gave promise 
of her future energy; she had already acquired the tricks 
of rank, the carriage of the head and the ready mechanical 
interest in inferiors — for the rest she was empty. In this 
critical fourteenth year of hers, during which it was pro- 
posed to fashion out of such happy German childhood a 
strict and delicate French princess, she did not read and 
she could barely write. The big round letters, as she 
painfully fashioned them in her occasional lessons, were 
those of a baby. Her drawing was infantile; and while 
she rapidly learnt a phrase in a foreign language by ear, a 
complete revolution in her education would have been 
needed to make her accurate in the use of words or to make 
her understand a Latin sentence or parse a French, one. 

To cultivate such a soil, exactly one hour a day was 
spared when the Court was at Vienna — somewhat more 
when it was in the country — and these few minutes were 
consumed in nothing more methodical than a dialogue, 
little talks in which Vermond was fatally anxious to bring- 
before his pupil (with her head full of those new French 
head-dresses of hers, the prospect of Versailles, and every j 
other distraction of mind) only such subjects as might j 
amuse her inattention. j 

The early months of 1769 were full of this inanity, Ver- j 



THE ESPOUSALS 47 

mond regularly reporting progress to the Austrian embassy 
in France, regularly complaining of the difficulty of his 
task, regularly insisting upon his rules and as regularly 
failing in his object. In the autumn the Empress was at 
the pains of asking her daughter a few questions, notably 
upon history. The result did not dissatisfy her, but mean- 
while Maria Antoinetta could hardly write her name. 

Side by side with this continued negligence in set training 
and in the discipline that accompanies it, went a very rapid 
development in manner. The child was admitted to the 
Court; she was even permitted the experiment of presiding 
at small gatherings of her own. The experiment succeeded. 
She acquired with an amazing rapidity what little remained 
to be learned of the externals of rank. The alternate phrases 
addressed to one's neighbours round a table, the affecta- 
tion of satiety and of repose, the gait in which the feet are 
hardly lifted; the few steps forward to meet a magnate, 
the fewer to greet a lesser man, and that smiling immobility 
before the ordinary sort, which is still a living tradition in 
great drawing-rooms; the power of putting on an air in 
the very moment between privacy and a public appearance 
— all these came to her so naturally and by so strongly 
inherited an instinct, that she not only charmed the genial 
elders of the Austrian capital but satisfied experienced 
courtiers, even those visitors from France, who examined 
it all with the eyes of connoisseurs and watched her deport- 
ment as a work of art, whose slight errors in technique they 
could at once discover but whose general excellence they 
were able to appreciate and willing to proclaim. 

She did indeed preserve beneath that conventional sur- 
face a fire of vigorous life that was apparent in every hour. 
Once in the foreign atmosphere of France and subject to 



48 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

exasperation and contrast, that heat would burst forth. 
She became, as her future showed, capable of violent scenes 
in public and of the natural gestures of anger — it is to 
her honour that she was on the whole so often herself. Here 
at Vienna in this last year her young energy did no more 
than lend spirit and grace to the conventions she so quickly 
acquired. 

The opening of the year 1770 found her thus, her German 
half forgotten, her French (though imperfect) habitual, 
her acquaintance with the air of a Court considerable. 
Though she was still growing rapidly she was now dressed 
as a woman and taught to walk on her high heels as did the 
ladies her seniors. Her hair was brushed off her high 
forehead in the French manner, the stuff of her frocks and 
the cut of them was French, her name was now permanently 
Frenchified for her, and she heard herself called everywhere 
"Marie Antoinette"; none but old servants were left to 
give her the names she had first known. 

M^rch passed and the moment of her departure 
approached. The child had never travelled. To her 
vivacious and eager temper the prospect of so great a journey 
with so splendid an ending was an absorbing pleasure. It 
filled her mind even during the retreat which, under Ver- 
mond's guidance, she entered during Holy Week, and every 
sign of her approaching progress excited in her a vivid 
curiosity and expectation, as it did in her mother a mixture 
of foreboding and of pride. 

The official comedy which the Court played during 
April heightened the charm: the heralds, the receptions, 
that quaint but gorgeous ceremony of renunciation, the 
mock-marriage, the white silver braid and the white satin 
of her Wedding-clothes, the salvoes of artillery and the 



I 



THE ESPOUSALS 49 

feasts were all a fine great play for her, with but one inter- 
lude of boredom, when her mother dictated, and she wrote 
(heaven knows with what a careful guidance of the pen) 
a letter which she was to deliver to the King of France. With 
that letter Maria Theresa enclosed a note of her own, 
familiar, almost domestic, imploring Louis XV., her con- 
temporary, to see to the child as "one that had a good 
heart," . . . but was ardent and a trifle wild. 

These words Were written upon the twentieth of the 
month; on the morning of the twenty-first of April, 1770, 
the line of coaches left the palace, and the archduchess 
took the western road. 

There was no sudden severance. Her eldest brother, 
Joseph, he who was associated with her mother in the empire, 
accompanied her during the whole of the first day. Of an 
active, narrow, and formal intelligence, grossly self-sufficient, 
arithmetical in temper, and with a sort of native atheism 
in him such as stagnates in minds whose development is 
early arrested, a philosopher therefore and a prig, earnest, 
lean, and an early riser, he was of all companions the one 
who could most easily help Marie Antoinette to forget 
Vienna and to desire Versailles. The long hours of the 
drive were filled with platitudes and admonitions that 
must easily have extinguished all her regrets for his Court 
and have bred in her a natural impatience for the new 
horizons that were before her. He left her at Melk. She 
continued her way with her household, hearing for the 
last time upon every side the German tongue, not knowing 
that she heard also, for the last time, the accents of sincere 
affection and sincere servility: the French temper with 
its concealed edges of sharpness was to find her soon enough. 

Her journey was not slow for the times. She took but 



50 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

little more than a week to reach the Rhine from Augsburg 
— a French army on the march has done no better. It 
was on the evening of the sixth of May that she could see, 
far off against the sunset, the astonishing spire of Strasburg 
and was prepared to enter France; only the Rhine was 
now between her and her new life. 

She bore upon her person during this last night on 
German soil a last letter of her mother's which had reached 
her but the day before yesterday. It was the most intimate 
and the most searching she was to receive in all the long 
correspondence which was to pass between them for ten 
years, and it contained a phrase which the child could hardly 
understand, but which, if texts and single phrases were of 
the least- advantage to conduct, might have deflected her 
history and that of Europe. " The one felicity of this 
world is a hajjpy marriage: I can say so with knowledge; 
and the whole hangs upon the woman, that she should be 
willing, gentle, and able to amuse. '^ 

Next day at noon she crossed in great pomp to an island 
in mid-river, where a temporary building of wood had been 
raised upon the exact frontier for the ceremony of her 
livery. 

It is possible that the long ritual of her position — she was 
to endure it for twenty years ! — was already a burden 
upon her versatility, even after these short weeks. Here, 
on this island, the true extent of the French parade first met 
her. It was sufl&cient to teach her what etiquette was to i 
mean. The poor child had to take off every stitch of her 
clothes and to dress, to. a ribbon or a hair pin, with an order 
strictly ordained and in things all brought from Versailles 
for the occasion. Once so dressed she was conducted to a 
central room where her German household gave her to her 



THE ESPOUSALS 51 

French one, at the head of which the kindly and sometimes 
foolish Comtesse de Noailles performed the accustomed 
rites, and the archduchess entered for ever the million 
formalities of her new world. They had not yet fatigued 
her. She was taken to Mass at the Cathedral; she received 
the courtesy of the old bishop, a Rohan, in whose great 
family Strasburg was almost an appanage. 

There was a figure standing by the Bishop's side. She saw, 
clothed in that mature majesty which a man of thirty may 
have for a child of fifteen, the bishop's coadjutor, a nephew 
and a Rohan too. She noted his pomposity and perhaps 
his good looks, but he meant nothing to her; he was but 
one of the Rohans to be remembered. He noted her well. 

Next day and for six more her journey proceeded amid 
perpetual deputations, Latin, flowers, bad verses, stage 
peasantry, fireworks, feasts, and addresses, until, a week after 
she had crossed the Rhine, she slept at Soissons and knew 
that on the morrow she would see the King, 

The pavement of the long road out from Soissons, the 
great royal road, had sounded under the wheels of her car- 
riage for now the best part of the day. She had already 
found Choiseul awaiting her in state and had exchanged 
with this old friend of her mother's those ceremonial compli- 
ments of which the child was now well weary, when, through 
the left-hand window of her coach, which was open to the 
warm spring day, she saw before her a thing of greater 
interest — the league-long line of trees that ends abruptly 
against the bare plain and that marks the forest of 
Compiegne. 

Into this wood the road plunged, straight and grand, 
until after a declivity, where a little stream is crossed (near 
the place where the railway lines join to-day) there appeared 



52 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

awaiting her, as Choiseul had awaited her some miles 
before, a great and orderly group of people, of carriages, and 
horses; but this company was far larger and was ranked 
with more solemnity than others that had met her upon her 
progress. She knew that it was the King. 

The splendour which a history full of trumpets had lent 
to the French name, the lineage of the kings, the imagined 
glories of Versailles — all these had penetrated the nursery 
and the schoolroom of the princess. As she came down 
from her carriage, with either hand reposing in the hands of 
her escort, an awe of the Capetian monarchy came upon 
her, and she knelt upon the roadway in the midst of the 
Court, of the princesses who now first saw the little heiress 
of their lives, of the gilded carriages and the men-at-arms. 

The King raised her up and kissed her forehead; he 
motioned forward a heavy, lanky, frowning boy, his grand- 
son, for whom all this pomp existed. The lad shuffled 
forward, bent a little perhaps, and kissed her in his turn 
with due ceremony — for he was to be her husband. When 
this little ritual and its sharp emotions were over she had a 
moment, before her introductions to the Blood, to the 
King's mature daughters, to the Orleans and the rest, in 
which to seize with the bright glance that was always so 
ready for exterior things, the manner of the King. 

Louis XV. was at that moment a man just past his six- 
tieth year. Long habit had given him, as it gives to alL 
but the greatest of those educated to power, an attitude' 
constrained though erect. His age had told on him, he had 
grown somewhat fat, he moved without alertness and — 
a weakness which had appeared but lately — his rare and 
uncompleted gestures expressed the weight of his body; 
but his muscles were firm, his command of them perfect, 



THE ESPOUSALS 53 

and he still had, especially in repose, so far as age can have 
it, grace. 

The united pallor of his complexion, which had been 
remarkable in youth, seemed now more consonant to his 
years. The steady indifference to which he had reduced 
his features w^as now more dignified than when its rigidity 
had seemed unnatural and new. His expression even 
acquired a certain strength from the immobility and firm- 
ness of his mouth whose lines displayed a talent for exact 
language and a capacity for continued dignity; but his 
eyes betrayed him. 

They were warm in spite of a habit of command, but the 
sadness in them (which was profound and permanent) was 
of a sort w^hich sprang from physical appetites always 
excessive and now surviving abnormally beyond their time. 
There was also in those eyes the memory of considerable 
but uprooted affections, and, deeper, of a fixed despair, 
and deeper far — a veil as it were behind their brightness 
— the mortal tedium, to escape from which this human 
soul had sacrificed the national traditions and the ancient 
honour of the crown. 

This great monarch, whom no one since his boyhood had 
approached without a certain fear, received his grandson's 
betrothed with an air almost paternal. It was a relaxation 
upon his part to which he owed, during the remainder of 
his life, the strongly affectionate respect which Marie 
Antoinette, vivacious and ungoverned, paid to him alone 
in the palace. 

He presented the rest in turn. She heard names which 
were to mix so intimately with her own destiny, and when 
they set out again upon the road she could discreetly watch 
during the long ten miles to Compiegne, Chartres who 



54 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

would soon be Orleans, the faded faces of the King's 
spinster-daughters, the old Duke of Ponthievre; and she 
watched with a greater care that daughter of his whose 
foolish, dainty, and sentimental face, insecure upon its 
long thin neck, was that of a young, unhappy widow: the 
Princesse de Lamballe. 

When they had slept at Compiegne in state, the whole 
pageant moved on next morning down the Paris road upon 
the last day's march of that journey, and the child thought 
that she was now upon the threshold of nothing but an 
easy glory. She was nearing — amid great mobs and a whole 
populace come out to greet her, not only Paris and Ver- 
sailles, but much more — that woman whose name her 
mother had heard and half forgotten, whose name she 
herself had never heard. It was a name whose influence 
was to deflect the first current of her life: the name of 
Du Barry. 



There is but one instrument efficacious to the govern- 
ment of men, which is Persuasion, and Persuasion sickens 
when its agent fails in dignity. 

Dignity is the exterior one of the many qualities necessary 
to commandment; these in some cases touch closely upon 
virtue, so that, in some situations of authority, a dignified 
man is presumably a good one. But in the particular case 
of national government it is not so. The audience is so 
vast, the actor so distant and removed, that in this matter 
dignity resides mainly in the observance of whatever ritual 
the national temper and the national form of the executive 
demand. Such functions of ritual endanger rather than 
strengthen the soul of him who is called upon to assume them. 



I 



THE ESPOUSALS 56 

To his intimates they appear as mummeries. It is often a 
sign of personal excellence in a ruler that he is disgusted with 
them and even casts them aside; but they are necessary to 
the State. For if such ritual is ill-observed, dignity fails; 
in its failure persuasion, I say, sickens, and when persuasion 
sickens, government, upon which depends the cohesion of a 
nation and the co-ordination of its faculties, breaks down. 

The method of government in France at this time was 
a true personal monarchy. 

The institution had increased in consciousness and in 
executive power down the long avenue of fourteen hundred 
years. Its roots were in Rome. It stood up in the seventh 
century as a memory of the Roman Peace, in the eighth 
as a promise to restore the Roman order. From the ninth 
onward it was vested in a Gaulish family and already had 
begun to express the Gaulish unities; by the thirteenth its 
mission was ardent and victorious. When the religious 
wars of the sixteenth century were resolved in a national 
settlement and the Bourbon branch was finally acknowl- 
edged, the crown was supreme and the whole people held 
to and were summed up in the Monarchy. It had made 
a yeoman of the serf, it had welded the nation together, it 
had established the frontiers, it had repressed the treason 
of the wealthy Huguenots: it was France. 

The person of the Monarch was public and publicly 
worshipped. His spoken words were actually law: he 
could impose a peace; his private decision could suspend 
a debt, imprison a transgressor, ruin or create an industry. 
Into such a mould had the French energy forced the execu- 
tive when the genius of Richelieu and the cunning of Mazarin 
confirmed the powers of the throne, and left them in legacy 
to the virile sense of Louis XIV, 



56 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

This King was very great and cast accurately also to 
the part he should fill. The conventions and the trap- 
pings of the part delighted him; he played it royally, and 
when he died, though he left the crown to an infant great- 
grandson, yet its security seemed as permanent as does 
to-day the security in similar powers of our English rich. 
But that great-grandson, at first gradually and at last 
rapidly, undermined the stable seat he had inherited. Louis 
XV., by his good qualities as well as by his evil, tended more 
and more to reject the ritual necessary to his kingship. His 
good breeding and his active physical appetites, his idleness 
and his sincerity, all combined to weary him of the game, 
so that at the end of his long reign he had almost ceased in 
the eyes of the populace to be a King at all. 

The Monarchy therefore perished, and mainly through 
Louis XV. 's incapacity to maintain its essential livery. 
Its collapse, its replacement (with consequences enormous 
to the whole of Europe) by that other French formula 
which we call "The Revolution" or "The. Republic" Was 
so exactly contemporaneous with Marie Antoinette's mar- 
riage and with her presence at Versailles, that far too great 
a part in the catastrophe is assigned to her own mis- i 
judgments and misfortunes. No error or disaster of hers 
gave the death shock to the institution with which her life 
was mingled; that stroke had been delivered before the 
child crossed the Rhine, and the moment when the blow 
was struck was that in which Mercy had penned the name 
*'Du Barry," which Maria Theresa had read so carelessly 
in Vienna on the same day that brought the letter sealing 
her daughter's marriage. 

The public appearance of Madame Du Barry was the 
turning point in the history of Versailles, and the little 



THE ESPOUSALS 57 

archduchess, when she came upon French earth, did not 
bring a curse to her new country, for the destiny of that 
country was ah-eady determined; rather this France which 
she had entered had prepared a tragedy for her and a fate 
expected by her own unhappy stars. 

Those who have watched the destruction of an old and 
strong wall will remember that it seemed at first to resist 
with ease every battery of the assault. At last there came 
one effort, more violent than the rest, which broke long, 
zig-zag lines throughout the fabric. The work was done. 
A few succeeding impacts visibly disintegrated the now 
loosened stones until the whole fell rapidly into ruin. So it 
was with the French Monarchy. The Regency, the float- 
ing theories of public criticism, the indeterminate foreign 
policy, the military reverses of the Seven Years' War, the 
careless lethargy of Louis XV. in State affairs, had impaired 
the fabric of tradition, but that fabric still stood. It might 
yet have been restored and made whole had not the King 
in his last years chosen a particular mistress and presented 
her in a particular manner, which threw chaos into the 
scheme which every Frenchman took for granted when he 
considered his sovereign. This last thud, coming after 
so many accumulated tremours, loosened all the wall. The 
trials and distractions of the next reign did but pull apart, 
and that easily, the loosened stones. The imposing posture 
which the French demand of their symbols had been dropped 
by the old King; the new one could not restore it. Choose 
at random any man or woman of your acquaintance in 
history, put them upon the throne after the death of Louis 
XV., and though the succeeding quarter of a century would 
have varied somewhat with various individualities in power, 
the doom of the Monarchy would by none have been averted. 



58 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

Let us see what happened when that fatal news of 
Madame Du Barry's advent spread through the Court 
and the capital of France and reached, like the ripple of a 
wave, the shores of Vienna. 

The King (as has almost every other king in history) had 
indulged his body; he had also indulged his desire for 
intimate companionship, his man's whim for an expression, 
a tone of voice, or a gesture. This licence, which to their 
bane is granted to privileged and symbolic men, had led 
him into every distraction. His amours were many, but 
middle age had fixed his routine, if not his constancy, upon 
one woman of remarkable character. 

Madame de Pompadour, as she came later to be called, 
was not of the nobility. To have taken a mistress publicly 
from the rank of business people was a serious reproach 
to the King; but though the mass condemned such an 
alliance, and though the wealthy, both of the middle class 
and of the courtiers, found an added blame in the financial 
reputation of her father and the notorious lightness of her 
mother, yet there was about this young, vigorous, and com- 
manding hostess something that could prevent too violent 
a reaction of opinion. 

She was extremely rich; her drawing-room had held all 
the famous men of her day; her education was wide and 
liberal, her judgment excellent. She played and sang 
with exceptional charm. She had good manner; she rode, 
spoke, read, and entertained as might the principal of her 
contemporaries. 

The acknowledged position of such a woman at Court, 
though a new degradation, was a tolerable one. It was 
easy for the most reserved to understand how, in those 
years between thirty and forty when the strongest affections 



THE ESPOUSALS 59 

take root, the King had found in her company a sort of 
home. Her character was, moreover, comprehensible and 
secretly sympathetic to that vast proprietary body, the 
Bourgeoisie, which then were and are now the stuff of the 
nation. 

She was prudent, she could choose a friend or a servant; 
her vivacity did not lack restraint. She was decent, fond of 
quiet silk, of good taste in decoration and of management. 
Her position at Versailles was a sort of conquest effected 
by the middle classes over the Court. Such a mistress, 
ruling for many years, the nation received at last with far 
more calm than could the buzzing nobles of the palace. 
As she (and the King) grew older, as her power became 
absolute and his individual presence grew remote, the 
situation was acceptable to Paris even more than to those 
who immediately surrounded the throne. 

She died. There was an interval of puzzled silence 
about the person of the King. No one dreamt of a new 
power at Court. A nullity of action in the King himself, 
a few more stories, obscure and scandalous, the end of the 
reign and the accession of the heir who should bring with 
him such reforms as all the intellect of the country 
demanded: these were the expectations which followed 
her death, and especially were they the hope or the certitude 
of that group of men, mostly not noble, who had long 
managed both law and finance. 

This prospect had, however, omitted one capital factor 
in the calculation. Louis XV., during these long years of 
regular habit, had grown old, and age in such a character, 
thus isolated, thus re-entrant, and yet hungry for whatever 
might tempt the senses, could only lead to some appalling 
error. In years he was, when Madame de Pompadour 



60 



MARIE ANTOINETTE 



died, but little past fifty, but that blindness to exterior 
opinion and that carelessness for the future which properly 
belong to an age much more advanced, had already 
spread like a veil over his mind. After an interval of less 
than four years from the Pompadour's death, the nation 
and the capital and those leaders of opinion "who awaited 
a mere negative decline full of petty rumours but con- 
trolled as to great affairs by that Choiseul whom the Pompa- 
dour herself had chosen for Minister, Were presented with 
the Du Barry: the scandal and its effect were overwhelming. 
This woman was a prostitute. 



IV 

THE DU BARRY 

THE presence of the Du Barry at the Court of Ver- 
sailles, the fact that this presence preceded the 
Austrian child's arrival, that it was first publicly 
admitted at the first public appearance of the Dauphiness, 
and that the four years of her tutelage were overshadowed 
by the new Royal Mistress was the initial and irretrievable 
disaster of Marie Antoinette's life. It moulded her view 
of the nation and of the family with whom she had now to 
mingle; it deeply affected the populace she was to attempt 
to rule; it cloistered, warped and distracted her vision of 
France at a moment in adolescence when vision is most 
acute and the judgment formed upon it most permanent. 
All the Queen's tragedy is furnished by the early spell of 
this insignificant and licentious woman. 

With her advent was introduced for the first time into 
the Court that insolent and calculated disregard for rule 
in gesture and vocabulary in which the rich will often 
secretly relax their ordered lives, but which, when it appears 
publicly amidst their daily furniture, is as shocking as 
nakedness or as blood. 

Judged in the pure light of human morals the position 
of the Du Barry was surely less offensive to God than that 
of any mistress any King has ever chosen. Louis wronged 
no one by this whim. He wrecked no remains of chastity 
— the woman had never known the meaning of the word. 

61 



62 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

He wronged no subject (as has and does almost every royal 
lover in every amour) — her marriage had been but a 
hurried form run through to satisfy etiquette, "that she 
might be presented at Court." He provided himself with 
a companion too inferior to make political intrigue her 
main ambition, and with one that could and did surround 
him with an abject but constant, familiar, and comfortable 
affection. It was such a vagary of old age as those in which 
have terminated countless lives, when old gentlemen of 
breeding but of enfeebled will surround their last years with 
youth and with the vigour, tainted vigour, that is inseparable 
from vulgarity. There is not one of us but has come upon 
a dozen such unions: they are often confirmed by a tardy 
marriage. 

But in the case of Louis and this scandal of his a neces- 
sary element to such disgrace, the element of retirement, 
was lacking. Those symbols which, if they are insisted 
upon, are mere hypocrisies but which, taken normally, are 
the guardians of a tolerable life, were outraged. The eyes 
of the noblewomen at Versailles were full, some of a real 
or affected timidity, others of a real or affected dignity. 
Such ladies as chose to be sprightly or even to advertise 
their loose habit with over-brilliant and vivacious looks, 
retained, considered, and could always assume, refinement; 
but the beautiful eyes of the Du Barry were brazen. The 
mignardises which are always ill-suited to a woman might 
be deliberately affected by the less subtle of the more elderly 
beauties: with the Du Barry, despite her evident youth, 
they had already become native and ineradicable. She 
lisped alarmingly; she lolled, or, when it was necessary 
for her to sit erect, was awkward. Her entry into a room 
was conscious; her assertions loud, her amiability oiled, 



4 



THE DU BARRY 63 

her animosities superficially violent. It is upon solemn 
occasions that such deficiencies are most glaring, and 
solemn occasions were of continual recurrence at Versailles. 
In a word, she was most desperately out of place, and there- 
fore produced an effect as of dirt, jarring against whatever 
was palatine and splendid in the evil of the Court by her 
parade of the loose good-nature and the looser spites of the 
Parisian brothels. 

Yet it is not difficult to see what had brought the King in 
to so fixed a relation w^ith her. Whoever will compare any 
of the portraits of her by Drouais with any by Boucher of 
the Pompadour will see, not the same character indeed, but 
the same brows and forehead. 

Louis could not continue in those early and familiar 
relations with her which had become a necessity to him, 
unless in some way her place were publicly acknowledged; 
but to force such a personality upon the Court, to give it 
precedence and to see that its position should be permanent, 
was an effort he had avoided for months. A scene was 
intolerable to him. He suffered from the most common 
defect attaching to men of lineage and wealth in that he 
feared, or rather could not endure, the prospect of violence. 
Orders even, and debate, if they were of a personal and 
verbal kind, he shrank from as do some men from loud 
noises. The more important and decisive of his actions 
were effected in short notes, every line of which, as we read 
them to-day, manifest his urgent need of isolation: of 
getting the business done without the friction of another 
presence, and once done, put aside for ever. 

For the public presentation of the Du Barry the marriage 
of his grandson, and especially the presence of the little 
archduchess, offered a fatal opportunity. It would be 



64 IVIARIE ANTOINETTE 

impossible for the malicious to allude to the office of the 
Mistress in the presence of the child; the occasion would 
compel the princes and princesses of the blood to attend, 
and would equally forbid any general revolt. He deter- 
mined to give the archduchess a formal banquet on the 
journey before the Court and its company had reached 
Versailles, to summon to it the chief members of the Court, 
and to let them find at table, without warning, the woman 
whose existence had hitherto not been spoken of in his 
presence. 

The official limit of Paris upon the west — in those days 
— a line drawn far beyond the houses and enclosing many 
fields, gardens, and suburbs, ran from what is now the 
Trocadero to what is now the Arc de Triomphe. Out- 
side the gate or barrier was an empty space of land but 
partially cultivated, and with no more than a scattered 
house or two upon it, save where, along the waterside and 
on the hill above it, clustered the village of Passy. This 
empty space merged gradually into what were then the 
wild and unfrequented Boulogne woods. Just on the 
edge of these, in a situation which was close to the town 
and yet upon one side accessible to the forest, stood a 
royal hunting-box called *'La Muette," which had gradu- 
ally developed into a little palace. Here, on the evening of 
the day after Compiegne, the long and splendid train of the 
Court arrived, bearing in the chief coach the King, the 
Dauphin, and this new Austrian girl for whom Louis had 
already shown so much respect and tenderness, and whose 
entry into her rank he was yet to distort. 

The day had been long for the child, but her curiosity 
and the vitality of her years had forbidden her to feel 
fatigue. 



THE DU BARRY 65 

Dense mobs of people, cheering and running by the side 
of the carriages, had indeed been familiar to her since her 
babyhood, but the vivacity and the shrillness and the 
surprising contrasts of this active civilisation, its solemn 
roads, its simple architecture, broken by an occasional 
and unexpected magnificence, the long lines of ordered 
trees which here seemed as native as in her own country 
they had seemed artificial and foreign; the half -hour's 
glimpse of an austere French convent which she had had 
when she visited at St. Denis (in passing) ; the King's 
daughter, veiled among the Carmelites; the outskirts of a 
gigantic city such as she had never known — all these suf- 
ficed to distract her until the fall of the cold spring evening, 
when the line of carriages clattered into the paved court- 
yard of La Muette. 

As though such experiences were not suflScient to bewilder 
her with the new world, the girl found when she came to 
her room, attended by Madame de Noailles and the ladies 
of her suite, such a parade of diamonds upon her table as 
to-day one will see only in the vulgar surroundings of a 
public show. 

The instinct for gems which was latent in her, but which 
the extreme simplicity of the Austrian Court had not per- 
mitted to arise, awoke at once. They were the diamonds 
of the woman who would have been her mother-in-law, had 
she lived, or rather who, had she lived, would never have 
permitted this marriage. They had reverted to the Crown 
upon her death, and Louis XV. had had them placed 
there upon Marie Antoinette's table in readiness for her 
appearance; he had so sent them partly from a sort of 
paternal kindness, partly from a desire typical in him to 
exceed even in giving pleasure; but also, perhaps, partly to 



66 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

atone for the harm he was about to do her. For when 
the child came down, some two hours later, and was led in 
the strict etiquette of the Court procession into the dining- 
hall of the little palace, she could not but notice throughout 
the meal that followed a constraint less natural than that 
regular constraint of the French court life which, in twenty- 
four hours of experience, had already struck her quick 
apprehension. It was not that men and women waited for 
the King to speak, but that their answers were given without 
vivacity, and with that curious mixture of restraint and pur- 
pose which she had already perhaps noticed, in her brief 
acquaintance with the French, to be the mark of their 
conversation in anger. She saw also that the old King 
looked straight before him with something of sullenness 
in his dignity, and she saw sitting next to him a woman 
whose presence there must have perpetually intrigued her 
imagination. That woman was the Du Barry. 

To whatever adventures and novelties the children of 
gentlefolk are exposed, there is always one note of vulgarity 
which they can make nothing of, and which, while it offends 
them, disturbs and astonishes them much more than it 
offends. In the midst of that curiously silent, erect, and 
very splendid table, where forty of her sex and of her rank 
were present, the presence of this one woman was in its nervous 
effect like the intolerable reiteration of a mechanical sound 
interrupting a tragic strain of music. The Du Barry had 
not the art, so common to the poorest members of the 
nobility or of the middle class, when they would slip in 
among the wealthy, of remaining silent and of affecting a 
reverence for her new surroundings. She held herself 
with a loose ease before them all, was perhaps the only one 
to laugh, and permitted herself an authority that was the 



THE DU BARRY 67 

more effective because it hardly concealed her very great 
hesitation in this first public recognition of her place. 

WTiat the child Marie Antoinette made of such an appari- 
tion will never be known. Her first letters to her mother 
upon the matter come later, when she had fully understood 
the insult or at least the indignity which had been done her. 
The only record we possess of her emotion is this: that 
when just after supper some courtier was at the pains 
to ask her with infinite respect and a peculiar irony, what 
she had thought of Madame Du Barry, she said, " Charm- 
ing," and nothing more. 

Next day in the early morning the coaches took on again 
the last steps of the journey to Versailles. Twelve miles 
which were a repetition of those scenes, those crowds, and 
those cheers of which the little archduchess was now 
sufficiently weary, but which were leading up to that event 
towards which her childhood had been directed, and which 
could not but drive out of her mind the doubts of the 
evening before. 

By ten o'clock the procession had passed the great gates 
of Versailles ; three hours were spent in the long, distressing, 
and rigid ceremonies of the Court in whose centre she was 
now placed and whose magnificence now first enveloped 
her. It was one before the procession formed for the mar- 
riage ceremony, and had placed at the head of it the girl, 
and the boy whom, in this long trial of two days, she had 
but little regarded. 

She came under the high vault of the new, gilded chapel 
as full of life as the music that greeted her entry. On her 
left the boy, to whom so much publicity was a torture, 
went awkwardly and with the nervous sadness of his eyes 
intensified; his gold braid and his diamonds heightened his 



68 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

ill-ease. He managed to give her the ring and the coins 
proper to the ceremony, to kneel and stand when he was 
told; but she went royally, playing, as girl-children so 
easily play, at womanhood, and smiling upon all around. 

The contrast was gravely apparent when they passed 
together down the aisle with the Quete, and when they sat 
— he effaced, she triumphant — during the little sermon 
which the Grand Almoner was bound to deliver. The Heir 
was not relieved till the Mass was over and the book was 
brought wherein the signatures of the witnesses and prin- 
cipals to a marriage are inscribed. 

It is natural to the extreme of privilege that it should 
affect occasional and absurd simplicities. The last genera- 
tion of Versailles was eager for such things, and it had 
become the custom that a royal marriage should be regis- 
tered not in any grand and parchment manner, but in the 
common book of a parish church, the church to whose 
parish the palace was nominally attached. Father Allart, 
the rector of this, in whose hard and unimportant life such 
days were set, came in to give the book. The Grand Almoner 
set it before them and they signed — the King first, with 
his large and practised name ; the Dauphin next in a writing 
that was thin, accurate and null. He passed the pen to this 
little new wife of his who was to sign third. At so practical 
a test her womanhood dropped off her, her exceedingly 
ignorant childhood returned. She got through the '* Marie" 
with no mistake of spelling, but the letters were a trifle 
uncertain and the word askew. Why had not someone 
ruled a line as lines are ruled in copy-books .^ *' Antoi- 
nette," the second word, was larger and gave more trouble; 
the last letters fell away deplorably, and when it came to 
the third name» "Josepha," it was too much for her 



THE DU BARRY 69 

altogether. She did her best with the "J" — it ended in 
a huge blot, and she became so flurried that she spelt her 
last nanie anyhow, without the "e," and let it go to pieces. 
She was relieved to give the pen to Provence, who, though 
he was yet so young, wrote his name strongly like a man. 
Artois, Mesdames, the Orleans followed. Each as they 
signed could see at the head of the page that deplorable 
and dirty scrawl which the child, whose advent each of them 
feared, had left as a record of her fifteenth year. 

The Court left the chapel. As they passed into the 
outer galleries of the palace before the enormous and increas- 
ing crowd which thronged the stairways and the landing- 
floors, the air seemed much darker than when they had 
passed in an hour before. Through the great windows 
the sky could be seen lowering for a storm. As she entered 
the private apartments to receive homage the darkness 
increased; the ceremony was not over before a first loud 
clap of thunder startled them; the rain fell with violence 
upon the populace that had crowded the gardens, the 
fireworks set out for that evening were drenched, the fine 
dresses of the Paris shop-women were spoiled; all the 
grandeur in front of the palace was lost in umbrellas. 
It cleared, and they crushed in, with their muddy boots 
well scraped, to file in thousands, a long procession urged 
on by the Guards, and passing, behind a barrier, down the 
immense hall, where the tables were set for cards. The King 
and his Court played solemnly like actors who must pre- 
tend to see no audience, sitting thus as a public symbol of 
the nation. 

The crowd passed thus, company after company, staring 
at Monarchy and at the dresses and the gems till the West 
grew dark, and the myriads of candles reflected on a wall 



70 MARIE ANTOINETTE ^ 

that was all mirrors, lent that evening its true colours. 
When the last reluctant sight-seer had looked his last over 
his shoulder, and had felt the tapestry drop behind him, the 
ceremony ceased, the tables were cleared, the King rose 
and conducted the bride to her room. A full ceremonial of 
etiquette was wearily and thoroughly performed, the Grand 
Almoner (once again) blessed the children's bed, and that 
was the end of the marriage. 

Outside, the crowd went back through the May night to 
their lodgings or to Paris, full of feasting, damp, surrounded 
by the fresh air that follows rain. They carried with them 
a confused memory of a great outing — music, grandeur, 
diamonds, innumerable lights, no fireworks, and a storm. 



THE DAUPHINE 

WEDNESDAY. 16th OF MAY, 1770, TO TUESDAY. IOth OF MAY, 1774 

WHEN the mock-marriage was over and the night 
passed, and when, with the Thursday morning, 
the long routine that was to be her life opened 
upon her, the child could watch with less excitement and 
with less illusion the nature of that new world. Her vivacity 
was not diminished, but her spirit immediately adopted 
a permanent attitude of astonished observation towards 
emotions and conventions whose general scheme she could 
not grasp at all. Daily the incidents which passed before 
her while they violently moved, also repelled her senses; 
she was reconciled to them only by their repetition. 

Versailles was the more bewildering to her because, in 
all its externals, it was the world she had known from her 
birth. The French cooking, architecture, dress, and social 
manner had for a century imposed themselves upon the 
palaces of Europe; but the French mind, now first in contact 
with her own, remained to her a marvellous and unpleasing 
revelation, which, even after years of regarding its energy, 
still shocked her. 

There was a ball that night. She danced with her 
bright-eyed and tall young brother-in-law; at what he 
was sneering she could not understand, nor even if the 
boy's expression w^as a sneer: she knew that it was strange. 
She did not notice the absence of half the Court ; she did not 

71 



72 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

know that her mother's request for Precedence to be given 
to the Princesses of Lorraine had raised this silent French 
storm; had she been told she would not have comprehended. 
The extreme and individual French jealousies, the furious 
discussions that underlie the united formality of French 
etiquette, were alien and inhuman to her German breeding ; 
for active and living, almost Southern, as was this Viennese 
girl, she enjoyed to the end the good simplicity of her mother's 
race. She danced with young Chartres. If something in 
him chilled her, she could not divine what it was in that 
character which even then seemed closed, and which later 
was to make him vote her husband's death, and sit at 
wine in his palace while she sat a prisoner and widowed in 
her prison at hand. 

For days the feasts continued and for days her unexpected 
experiences of persons and of a strange nationality were 
relieved by pageants and popular clamours which, at her 
age, could distract her from weary questions. It was at 
one of these that there sounded once more that note of 
disaster which came at rhythmic intervals across her life 
and continued to come until a climax closed it. She had 
leave to go with her aunts, the King's daughters, by night 
with a small escort to see the public holiday in Paris which 
celebrated her marriage. She was to go without ceremony, 
not to be recognized, merely to satisfy a child's curiosity 
for a spectacle in her own honour. As the coach came 
up the river road towards what is now the Trocadero 
hill she could already see far off the flash of the rockets, 
and she heard with increasing pleasure the roar of a great 
crowd met to do her honour. As she neared the great 
square which is called to-day the Place de la Concorde 
she was disappointed, as children are, to see that the coach 



THE DAUPHINE 73 

was late; the great scaffolding and final set-piece in which 
her initials were interlaced with those of the Dauphin was 
sputtering out in the inglorious end of fireworks— but 
something more intimate to her (had she known herself) 
and worse than her childish disappointment had marked 
the moment of her arrival. The coach was stopped 
abruptly, the guards closed round it, and it was turned 
back at once towards Versailles. As it rumbled through 
the darkness more quickly than it had come, she seemed to 
hear in the distant clamour both fierceness and terror. It 
was a sound of panic. She heard the news whispered 
respectfully and fearfully to her aunts during a halt upon the 
way. Perhaps they thought her too young to be told. She 
complained as she went that the truth was concealed from 
her, and when they reached the palace late that night she 
was crying. Next day the news was public, and she learned 
that after this first rejoicing in what was to be her capital 
city, there had been crushed and maimed and killed many 
hundreds of her people; it proved one of those misfortunes 
which, as much from their circumstance as from their 
magnitude, remain fixed for years in the memory of a nation, 
and the day on which she learned it was the last of the 
month of her weddine:. 

During the summer that followed this presage she learnt 
the whole lesson of Versailles. She was still a child. 
Mercy still wrote of her to her mother in a tone which, 
for all its conventional respect, was a tone now of irritation 
against, now of amused admiration for, a child. She had 
her daily childish lessons with the Abbe Vermond and daily 
exasperated him by her distractions. She still wrote 
painfully her childish letters to Maria Theresa, took her 
little childish donkey-rides, and was strongly impressed, 



74 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

as a child would be, by those of her elders who alone could 
show some authority over her — Mesdames, her husband's 
aunts. She was growing fast; and there is nothing more 
touching in the minute record of her life than the notes 
of her increasing stature during this year, so oddly does 
the nursery detail contrast with the splendour of her place 
in Europe and the titles of her role. 

She was still a child, but as her fifteenth birthday 
approached and was passed she had learnt (while it wearied 
her) the full etiquette of her part, and she had begun, 
though imperfectly, to recognise what were the politics of 
a Court and in what manner intrigue would approach her; 
how to avoid or master it she discovered neither then nor 
at any later time throughout her adolescence and maturity. 

With the advent of winter and its long and brilliant 
festivals, another thing which she had begun to comprehend 
in the Palace became for her a fixed object of hatred; the 
position and influence of the Du Barry. 

She knew now what this ofiicial place was which the 
Favourite held. Her disgust for such regulation and pomp 
in such an oflSce would in any case have been strong, for 
Marie Antoinette came from a Court where the sovereign 
was herself a woman and where all this side of men's lives 
was left to the suburbs; that disgust would in any case have 
been sharp, for she was too young and too utterly^ 
inexperienced to be indulgent : it would in any case have ' 
been increased by a sense of isolation, for all around this 
German child were the French gentry taking for granted 
that everything touching a King of France, from his vices 
to his foibles, must be dressed up in a national and sym- 
bolic magnificence. Her disgust would, I say, in any case 
have risen against so much complexity allied to so much 



THE DAUPHINE 75 

strength, but that disgust turned into an active and violent 
repulsion when she saw the Du Barry not only, as it were, 
official but also exercising power. This to her very young 
and passionate instinct, whether of sex, of rank or of policy, 
was intolerable; it was the more intolerable in that the 
Du Barry's first exercise of power happened to go counter 
to interests which the Dauphine regarded rather too em- 
phatically as those of Austria and of her family. 

The chief Minister of the Crown, the Due de Choiseul, 
kindly, sceptical, well bred and rather hollow, had been, if 
not the mere creation or discovery, at any rate the ally of 
Madame de Pompadour. Madame de Pompadour had been 
a statesman herself: Choiseul had perpetually supported 
her and she him, more especially when he ran in the rut of 
the time, showed himself conventionally anti-Christian, and 
(having been educated by the Jesuits) was drawn into the 
intrigue by which that order was suppressed. He had been 
Ambassador at Vienna, though that in a year when Marie 
Antoinette was a baby, so that she had no early memories 
of his snub-nose and happy, round face; but she had known 
his name all her life from the talk of the palace in Vienna, 
tmd she had known it under the title which he had assumed 
just after her birth. The Due de Choiseul was for her, as 
for every foreigner, a name now permanently associated 
with French policy and a Minister who was identical with 
Versailles. Maria Theresa was grateful to him for having 
permitted the marriage of her daughter : that daughter after 
some months of the French Court very probably imagined 
that he had not only permitted but helped to design the 
alliance. It was against this man that the Du Barry 
stumbled. 

It would not be just to accuse the young woman Du Barry 



76 MARIE ANTOINETTE 



I 



of design. The State was a very vague thing to her. She 
held good fellowship with many, owed her advancement to 
Choiseul's enemies, and was, in general, the creature of the 
clique opposed to him, while for D'Aiguillon, who already 
posed as the rival of the elder man, she felt perhaps a per- 
sonal affection. She was very vain and full of that domestic 
ambition which comes in floods upon women of her sort 
when they attain a position of some regularity. She loved 
to feel herself possessed of what she had learned in the old 
days to call (in the jargon of her lovers) "oflSce," "power"; 
to feel that she could "make" people. As for the pleasure 
of an applauded judgment, or the satisfaction of that appe- 
tite for choice which inspires women of Madame de Pompa- 
dour's sort in history, Du Barry would not have understood 
the existence of such an emotion. The most inept and the 
most base received the advantage of her patronage, not 
because she believed them capable of administration, but 
simply because they had shown least scruple in receiving 
her, or later, amid the general coldness of the Court, had 
been the first to pay her an exaggerated respect. As for 
those with whom she could recall familiarities in the past, 
she was willing to make the fortunes of them all. 

Though such an attitude could easily have been played 
upon by the courtiers of her set, it could never have supplied 
a motive force for her demands nor have nourished the 
tenacity with which she pressed them; that force and 
that tenacity were supplied to her by her own acute sensitive- 
ness upon her new position. The angry pique to which all 
her kind can be moved in the day of their highly imperfect 
success was aflame at every incident which recalled to her 
the truth of her origin and the incongruity of her situation : 
in her convulsive desire to revenge against every slight. 



THE DAUPHINE 77 

real or imagined, she found an ally in the old King, her 
lover. He also knew that he was in a posture of humilia- 
tion, and under his calm and tired bearing he suffered 
a continual irritation from that knowledge. As he pottered 
about his frying-pans, cooking some late dish to his liking, 
or went alone and almost furtively down the hidden stair 
between her little, low, luxurious rooms and his own rooms 
of state, his silent mind was even less at ease than in the 
days, now so long past, when an utter weariness with the 
things of the flesh and a despair of discovering other emo- 
tions had first put into his eyes the tragedy that still shines 
from them upon the walls of Versailles. 

All, therefore, that the Du Barry did, through Louis XV. 
as her power increased was not for this or that person whom 
she feared or loved ; it was rather against this or that person 
whose presence she found intolerable. All that she sug- 
gested, so far as persons were concerned, the King was 
ready to achieve. 

Had some married woman of force and subtlety formed 
the centre of opposition to the favourite, the reign would 
have ended easily. Mary of Saxony, the Dauphin's mother, 
had been such a woman and would, had she lived, have con- 
ducted affairs to a decent close. Fate put in the place of 
such a woman first, three old maids — the King's daughters 
— and next this little girl, the Dauphine. 

The origins were slight, but in its course the quarrel 
gathered impetus. At first came that silent great supper- 
party at La Muette and the instinctive repulsion which the 
child felt and which this woman from the streets as instinct- 
ively resented. Next, in the summer, one of the Dauphine's 
women had a sharp quarrel with the favourite in the stalls 
of the Court theatre. The favourite had her exiled from 



78 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

Court, and the Dauphine, crying secretly with anger in 
her rooms, could obtain no redress. During the summer 
absences of the Court in the country palaces a perpetual 
travel and larger room to move prevented an open battle; 
in the following winter that very grave event, the exile of 
Choiseul, sealed the difference. 

It was the error of Choiseul not that he had opposed 
the favourite's entry — on the contrary, he had thought it 
a useful whim that would amuse and occupy his sovereign 
— but that he could not take her seriously. His "world," 
his relatives, his intimates, those whom he had placed and 
salaried during twelve years of power, Were outspoken in 
their contempt for the Du Barry. Her own simple spite 
lumped all together and made the Minister the cause of her 
diflSculties and their victim. For months she had half 
amused, half frightened Louis by an increasing insolence 
to De Choiseul at cards and at table. He had met this 
insolence at first with the ironic courtesy that he must have 
shown in his life to a hundred such women ; later by a care- 
ful and veiled defence; last of all by a resigned and some- 
what dignified expectation of what he saw would be the end. 

When a society approaches some convulsion the pace 
of change increases enormously with every step towards the 
catastrophe. " This at least no one dreams of. That 
at least cannot happen!" But this and that do happen, 
and at last all feel themselves to be impotent spectators of 
a process so forcible and swift that no wisdom can arrest it. 
Political literature in such moments turns to mere criticism 
and speculation; it no longer pleads, still less directs. So 
it is to-day with more than one society of Western Europe; 
so it was with the close of Louis XV. 's reign. 

In May, 1770, when the Austrian Alliance was con 



THE DAUPHINE 1^ 

summated by the arrival of Marie Antoinette, and by the 
wedding at Versailles, the revocation of the one conspicuous 
statesman in France would have seemed impossible. He 
had no more capacity than have the most of politicians, but 
he did at least reach that rough standard demanded in 
that trade, and his name was rooted in the mind of his 
own public and of Europe. If the dismissal of Choiseul 
had been proposed in the summer, there still remained 
enough active force opposed to this new Du Barry woman 
to have prevented the folly; but at the rate things were 
going every month weakened that force; by the end of the 
year it was too late to act in his defence. 

On Christmas Eve fat Hilliers came lurching out of 
the Favourite's room and brought Choiseul a note in 
Louis' hand. It was a short note exiling him to his 
place at Chauteloup and relieving him of oflfice. 

There was no one to replace the Minister: the action 
was that of a common woman who exercised a private 
vengeance and who could conceive no reasons of State. Yet 
no one was astonished — save perhaps the child to whom 
so vast a change was the climax of all that had bewildered 
her since she had first spoken to the French Court. 

Maria Theresa and Mercy, her ambassador to Versailles, 
had that knowledge of the world which permitted each to 
find footing, even in such a welter. Each from a long ex- 
perience knew well that the depth of political life moves 
slowly for all the violent changes of machinery or of names. 
Each felt the Alliance — the object of all their solitude — to 
be still standing in spite of Choiseul's fall ; and each divined 
that their little Princess, who was the pledge of that alli- 
ance at the French Court, and whom they destined, when 
she was Queen, to be its perpetuator, might at this moment 



80 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

weaken and ruin it: her probable indiscretion and her sim- 
pUcity were the points of danger. Her plain spoken anger 
might ruin their plans for a recovery of Austrian influence. 
Each, therefore, concentrated upon a special effort — Mercy, 
by repeated visits from the Austrian Embassy in Paris to 
the court at Versailles and by repeated admonitions ; Maria 
Theresa (in whom the fear for her daughter's future and 
position was even greater than her solicitude for the 
Austrian policy) by repeated letters, too insistent perhaps 
and too personal wholly to effect their object. 

Marie Antoinette was persuaded to a certain restraint, 
but she was neither convinced nor instructed. She saw 
the whole situation as a girl would see it, in black and white : 
Madame du Barry v/as of the gutter, and had yet been 
able to destroy a name which she had always heard associated 
with the fortunes of her own family and the dignity of the 
French Crown. The complexity of the situation, the short 
years it was likely to last, the necessity during those years of 
Weighing the intricate and changing attachments of the great 
families in their interlacing groups — all this escaped her. 

So little did she see the intricate pattern of politics that, 
when Louis XV., less than two months later, exiled the 
higher courts of law and all but roused a rebellion, she did 
not connect with the reign of her enemy this act of violence 
which isolated and imperilled the Crown; she thought it 
royal, immediate, and just, still seeing mere kingship as 
children see it in a fairy tale, beneficent and paternal. 

The six months of administrative anarchy that followed 
meant nothing to her. \Mien, in July, D'Aiguillon — inept, 
a mere servitor of the Favourite's — was at last appointed 
to the vacant post of Prime Minister, this act — in its way 
more astounding than the dismissal of Choiseul — was 



THE DAUPHINE 81 

only remarkable to her because it was the Du Barry's 
doing. And during the whole of her sixteenth year she re- 
presented at Court a fixed indignation which, in her alone, 
steadily increased as the powers of the Favourite became 
absolute; for as Marie Antoinette approached Woman- 
hood she developed a quality of resistance which was the 
one element of strength of her early character, but from 
which was fatally absent any power to design. That obsti- 
nate power of resistance was to raise around her multiplying 
and enduring enmities; it was to mature her in her first 
severe trials, but it was also to bring her to the tragedy 
which has lent her name enduring and exaggerated nobility. 
This opposition which the Dauphine offered to Madame 
du Barry, an opposition which did but rise as that Woman 
(during 1771) opened, one after the other, all the avenues 
of power to her lowest or least capable courtiers, took on 
no form of violence. 

Marie Antoinette, as the pale auburn of her hair and her 
thick eyebrows darkened, as her frame strengthened and 
her voice took on a fuller tone, added to the vivacity of her 
childhood a new note of passionate emphasis which was 
ill-suited to her part, and which in any circumstances but 
those of luxury would have approached vulgarity. In 
many minor matters she forebore to put the least restraint 
upon a momentary annoyance; she would have some 
design she disapproved destroyed; a bookcase, though it 
was Gabriel's, she had broken before her eyes, to appease 
her discontent. But in the major matter of this quarrel 
she put on a sort of solemnity, and her resistance took the 
simple but unconquerable form of silence. She would not 
recognise the Favourite, though she were to meet her five 
times a day, and she would not address one word to her. 



82 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

That silence, which kept open at Court a sharp wound 
and which stood a permanent and a most powerful menace 
to all that had power at Versailles, became for Mesdames, 
the King's daughters (who had first given this example), and 
for all the defeated parties a welcome symbol — though for the 
Princess herself it was a most perilous one. To break that 
silence was the effort of every converging force about her. 
Her mother in repeated warnings ; Mercy, the King, and most 
of all the Favourite herself, came to think it a first point of 
policy that what might have been pardoned in the child 
should not remain a cause of acute offence in the woman. 
She was now nearly eighteen months at Versailles ; she had 
entered her seventeenth year. But whenever the Du Barry 
crossed her in the receptions or met her eyes at table, what- 
ever beginnings of a salute may have escaped the loose 
manner of the Favourite, she suffered the mortification 
of a complete refusal. The feminine comedy was admirably 
played, and for the Dauphine the King's mistress remained 
a picture or an empty chair — sometimes to be blankly 
gazed at — never to be recognised or addressed. 

There was indeed a moment in August when the 
Dauphine's resolution wavered. Mercy had visited the Du 
Barry; he had spoken to her intimately and with gallantry. 
He had probably promised her the graces of the Dauphine; 
he returned to Marie Antoinette to press his advice. So 
pressed she promised her mother's ambassador that she 
would speak, but when the moment came and the meeting 
had been carefully arranged, after cards at evening, she 
remembered too much: she remembered perhaps most 
keenly a recent thing, the choice of one of this woman's 
friends, in spite of her protests, for one of her ladies in 
waiting. She strolled to the table where Mercy and the 



THE DAUPHINE 83 

Favourite were talking together. As she came up Madame 
du Barry put on an air of expectation which invited her 
approach. The girl hesitated and turned back. A scene 
not consonant to that society was avoided only by Madame 
Adelaide, who had the presence of mind to summon her 
niece at the critical moment of the insult ; but the fiasco led 
to further and more peremptory orders from her mother, to 
a long and troubled interview between Mercy and the King, 
and at last to the conclusion at which they all desired. The 
Dauphine recognised the Du Barry; but the recognition 
came in a manner so characteristic of Marie Antoinette that 
it would have been better for her and for them if they had 
not won their battle. 

Upon the New Year's Day of 1772 at Versailles, on which 
day it was agreed (and this time most solemnly vowed) that 
a greeting should be given, and during the formal reception 
held at Court that day, there came a moment when in an 
uneasy silence, the moving crowd of the Court saw the 
Dauphine approach the Favourite, pass before her, and 
say as she passed — not so directly nor so loudly as might 
be wished, but still so that the Du Barry might have taken 
the words as addressed to herself: *' There are very many 
people at Versailles to-day." Before a reply could be 
given her she had passed on. Next day she said to Mercy: 
"I shall not let that woman hear the sound of my voice 
again." 

The moment of time during which this quarrel reached 
its height was one of extreme anxiety to Maria Theresa, 
and indeed to all. It was that during which the first 
public renunciation of the international morality which 
had hitherto ruled in Christendom was in negotiation at 
the instance of Prussia. It was secretly proposed that 



84 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

an European government should be disregarded without 
treaty and subjected to mere force without the sanction 
of our general civilisation. Frederick had suggested to 
Russia long before with deference, recently to Catholic 
Austria with a sneer, the partition of Poland. 

It is characteristic of the more deplorable forms of 
insurgence against civilised morals that they originate 
either in a race permanently alien to (though present in) 
the unity of the Roman Empire, or in those barbaric prov- 
inces which were admitted to the European scheme after 
the fall of Rome, and which for the most part enjoyed but 
a brief and precarious vision of the Faith between their 
tardy conversion and the schism of the sixteenth century. 
Prussia was of this latter kind, and with Prussia, Frederick. 
To-day his successors and their advisers, when they attempt 
to justify the man, are compelled still to ignore the European 
tradition of honour. But this crime of his, the partition of 
Poland, the germ of all that international distrust which 
has ended in the intolerable armed strain of our time, has 
another character attached to it : a character which attaches 
invariably to ill-doing when that ill-doing is also uncivilised. 
It was a folly. The same folly attached to it as has attached 
to every revolt against the historic conscience of Europe: 
such blindnesses can only destroy; they possess no per- 
manent creative spirit, and the partition of Poland has 
remained a peculiar and increasing curse to its promoters 
in Prussia; to their mere accomplices in St. Petersburg it 
has caused and is causing less weakness and peril; while 
it has left but a slight inheritance of suffering to the 
Hapsburgs, whose chief was at the moment of the crimes 
but a most reluctant party to it. i 

There is not in Christian history, though it abounds in 



THE DAUPHINE 85 

coincidence or design, a more striking example of sin suitably 
rewarded than the menace which is presented to the 
Hohenzollerns to-day by the Polish race. Not even their 
hereditary disease, which has reached its climax in the 
present generation, has proved so sure a chastisement to 
the lineage of Frederick as have proved the descendants of 
those whose country he destroyed. An economic accident 
has scattered them throughout the dominions of the Prussian 
dynasty; they are a source everywhere of increasing danger 
and ill-will. They grow largely in representative power. 
They compel the government to abominable barbarities 
which are already arousing the mind of Europe. They 
will in the near future prove the ruin of that family to which 
was originally due the partition of Poland. ^ 

Enormous as was the event, however, both in its quality 
of evil and in its consequences to mankind, it must not detain 
the reader of these pages. Its interest here lies only in the 
first and principal example which it affords of Marie 
Antoinette's direct and therefore unpolitical temper. She 
was indeed only upon the verge of womanhood — she had 
but completed her sixteenth year, but her failure to under- 
stand the critical, and, above all, the complex necessities of 
the Hapsburgs at that moment was characteristic of all the 
further miscalculations that were to mark her continual 
interference with diplomacy for twenty years. It was 
imperative that Austria should find support in the grave 
issue to which Maria Theresa had been compelled against 
her conscience and her reason. Berlin and St. Petersburg 
suddenly having agreed to a material aggrandisement, help 
was imperative, and help could only come from her ally at 
Versailles. Upon this one occasion, if upon no other, the 
young daughter of the Empress was justified in working for 



86 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

her family, and that could only be done through the woman 
whose influence was now the one avenue of approach to 
Louis XV. A recognition of the Du Barry was essential to 
Vienna in that new year of 1772. The Dauphine made it, 
but she made it in such a way that it was a worse insult 
even than had been her former silence. Had war broken 
out that spring, at the melting of the snow, it is possible or 
probable that Versailles would not have supported Vienna 
against Prussia and Russia in arms. 

There was almost a quarrel between the growing girl and 
the Empress, her mother. To that mother she still remained 
the child who had left Vienna two years before; but then, 
in Versailles and to those who saw her, this year made her 
a woman. 

That she had passed the boundary of adolescence was 
apparent in many ways. She was more and more enfran- 
chised from the influence of elder women — notably of her 
husband's aunts, her intimacy with whom faded through- 
out 1772 and disappeared in 1773. Her step had acquired 
that firm and rather conscious poise which was to distinguish i 
her throughout her life. The growth of her stature was f 
now accomplished, and she was tall, and though her shoul- 
ders had not the grace and amplitude which they later 
assumed, her figure had, in general, achieved maturity. Her 
hair, now a trifle darker and browner in its red, her eye- 
brows, always pronounced but now thicker and more 
prominent, announced the same change. Her motives also, 
though insuflficient in judgment, were deeper in origin. Her 
resistance to her mother's and to Mercy's most pressing 
insistence in the matter of the Favourite was a resistance 
no longer even partially suggested to her by others ; it was due 
now to a full comprehension of the old King's degradation, 



THE DAUPHINE 87 

and to a formed abhorrence of the Du Barry. Moreover, 
when she yielded for a moment — as she did perhaps 
three times in the course of two years — it Was with some 
measure of thought: she consented to approach the King's 
mistress at moments when the ambassador or her mother 
had convinced her by speech or letter of an acute necessity; 
but already, in her excuses when she refused, she began to 
use the argument of a woman, not of a child — she pleaded 
"the authority of her husband": it was a phrase in which 
she, least of all, put faith. 

With this advent of womanhood there came, of necessity 
to a character so ardent, fixed enmities. She was no longer 
despised as a child; she was hated as an adult. Mesdames, 
the King's daughters, whose influence over her had dis- 
appeared, joined, in their disappointment, the over-large 
group of her detractors. The fatal name of "Autrichienne," 
the foreign label that clung to her at the scaffold, 
originated in the drawing-rooms of the three old maids, 
and all around her, as her power to order or to fascinate 
increased, there increased also new hatreds which attained 
to permanence, because her German memories, her eager 
action, her crude and single aspect of the multitudinous 
and subtle French character, her rapid turning from this 
pleasure to that, her ignorance of books and of things, lent 
her no power to wear those courtiers down or to play a 
skilful game against them. 

Forgetfulness was easy to her. To help her to forget 
she had the intoxication of that moment which comes once 
in life and in the powerful blossoming of our humanity. Her 
eighteenth year, the last year before she ascended the 
throne, Was the great moment of her youth. 

She had not been beautiful as a child, she was not destined 



88 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

to real beauty in her womanhood; but at this moment, with 
the spring of 1773 and on to that of 1774, there radiated 
from her the irresistible appeal of youth. 

Paris, which had learnt to despise and half to hate the 
Crown, which had felt itself widowed and abandoned by 
the emigration of the Bourbons to Versailles, caught her 
charm for a day. "When she made with the Dauphin her 
first official entry into the city, great crowds acclaimed her 
perpetually; she had that emotion, so dear to Women that 
it will drive them on to the stage itself, of a public applause 
directed toward their persons : the general applause of Paris 
was almost an applause of lovers. For just these passing 
hours on a sweet day in early June she saw and loved the 
city wherein her doom was written upon every stone, and 
for these hours the Tuilleries which she inhabited were faery 
and so full of delight that she could not tell whether the air 
was magical or owed its fragrance only to the early flowers. 

In such a mood, daily drinking in happiness and a certain 
sense of power, admired almost openly by distant men and 
— very likely — by Artois, her young brother-in-law, v/ho 
had known her all these years, she passed the high tide of 
the summer and autumn, and found in the ensuing winter 
for the first time that lively and absorbing interest in social 
pleasure which very largely determined her life. 

Of the balls in which she danced, of the masked balls that 
were her special delight, one stands out in history — and 
stood out in her own memories, even to her last hour, a night 
unlike all others. 



The reader has divined that the marriage of May 1770 
had been no jnarriage. It was contracted between children ; 



THE DAUPHINE 89 

and years must pass — years which were those of the 
school-room for both of them — before Maria Theresa could 
expect an heir with Hapsburg blood for the French throne. 
But the years passed; the child was now a woman, and 
still the marriage remained a form. 

From an accident to which I will return in its proper 
place, the Dauphin and herself were not wife and husband; 
and to this grave historical fact must largely be attributed 
the disasters that were to follow. For the moment, how- 
ever, this misfortune did little but accentuate her isolation 
and perhaps her pride. In her childish advent to the 
Court it could mean nothing to her. Lately she had 
understood a little more clearly; but she was pure; her 
training was in admirable conformity to her faith. She was 
not yet troubled — until the opening of that last year, '74, 
with its gaiety and pride. This season of vigour, radiance 
and youth lacked the emotion which has been so wisely and 
so justly fitted by God to that one moment through which 
we make our entry into a full life. She was married to the 
heir of France: her virtue and her pride forbade her to be 
loved. Yet she was also not married to that heir, and her 
life now lacked, and continued to lack, not only love but 
the ardent regard that was her due. 

No Frenchman could have turned her gaze. Between 
her temperament and that of her husband's nation the 
gulf was far too deep. But one night, late, as she moved, 
masked in her domino, through the crowd of a Paris ball- 
room, she saw among so many faces whose surface only 
was revealed to her another face of another kind, a boy's. 
It arrested her. The simple and sincere expression which 
Versailles had never shown her, the quiet manliness which, 
in Northerners, is so often allied to courage and which stands 



90 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

in such contrast to the active virility of Gaul — all that 
which, in the secret places of her German heart, unknown 
to herself, she thought proper to a man, all that whose lack 
(though she could not analyze it) had disturbed and wounded 
her in the French palace, was apparent in the face before 
her. She asked his name and heard that it was Fersen. 
He was a Swede, the son of a considerable political noble, 
sent here on his travels with a tutor. She went up and 
spoke to him. 

She could look into his eyes and see their chivalry. His 
low, handsome forehead, his dark brows, his refined, firm 
lips, his large and gentle eyes, completed in detail the pro- 
found impression with which that first glance had struck 
her. Once she had begun to speak to him, so masked, she 
continued to speak continually. A boy of eighteen is far 
younger than a girl of his age — they Were born within six 
Weeks of each other, and he was a child compared with 
her; he desired her, she consenting, and he became hers 
in that moment. When they had separated and he reached 
his rooms at morning there was ready in his heart what 
later he wrote down, that the Dauphine Was delightful, and 
that she was the most charming princess he ever had 
known. She upon her side had followed him with her eyes 
to the door of the great assembly. She was not to see him 
again for four years, but during all those years she remem- 
bered him. 



This was the way in which Marie Antoinette entered 
life, and almost simultaneously with that entry came her 
ascent of the throne: the old King was changing. 

He suffered. His digestion failed; from time to time 



THE DAUPHINE 91 

he would abandon his hunting. It was in the January of 
1774 that the Dauphine had naet Axel de Fersen. Before 
the spring of that year Louis XV. 's increasing infirmities 
were to reach their end. 

Gusts of strong faith swept over him in these faiHng years, 
as strong winds filled with a memory of autumn, will sweep 
the dead reeds of December. His fear of death, and that 
hunger for the Sacraments which accompanies the fear, 
came to him in dreadful moments. For thirty-eight years 
he had neither communicated nor confessed. All his life 
he had avoided the terrace of St. Germain's, because a 
little lump far off against the eastern sky was St. Denis, 
the mausoleum of the kings, and he had not dared to look 
on it. But, with no such memorial before him, death now 
appeared and reappeared. 

Once in his little private room — it was late at night 
and November — he played at cards with the Du Barry. 
They were alone, save for an old crony of his pleasures, 
Chauvelin, which Well-bred and aged fellow stood behind 
the woman's chair, leaning upon it and watching the 
woman's cards in silence, his rapacious features strongly 
marked in the mellow light of the candles. Something 
impelled the woman to glance up at him- over her shoulder. 
"Oh, Lord! M. de Chauvelin, what a face!" It was the 
face of a dead man. She leapt and started from it, and 
the body fell to the floor. 

The King, his age and apathy all shaken from him, 
shouted down the empty corridors: "A priest! a priest!" 
They came, and in the presence of the King absolved what 
lay immovable upon the shining floor, in a hope or wish 
that some life lingered there. But Chauvelin was quite 
dead. 



92 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

Now, in his last Easter, the dread came back for ever and 
inhabited the King. Upon the Maundy Thursday of '74 
(it was the last day of March) the Court were all at Mass, 
and the sermon was ending. The priest, strong in that 
tradition of Bossuet which had not perished, turned to the 
royal chair and related for his peroration the legend of an 
ancient curse: "Forty days, and Nineveh shall be no more." 
All the Court heard it and forgot it before the chanting of 
the creed was done — but the King was troubled. He 
reckoned in his mind; he counted dates and was troubled. 

The liturgical times went by; he abandoned his mistress; 
he lived apart and gloomy: but his Easter duties Were not 
accomplished, nor did he communicate or confess, nor was 
he absolved. Then the cloud lifted and he began to forget, 
and the tie which held him to the Du Barry and which 
had in it now something of maturity and routine, was very 
strong upon him. He yielded and returned to her where 
she waited for him down the park at the little Trianon. 
His domesticity returned — but not for long. 

It was upon Tuesday the twenty-sixth of April that he 
came in from hunting changed. He would not eat. He 
wondered a little and was cherished by his companion, but 
his fever grew. Next day he woke to suffering. He 
attempted to hunt, but his knees were Weakened and he 
could not ride his horse; and coming back to Trianon, he 
groaned with his head in torment. His dread increased; but 
his doctors, who had been long familiar with his moody 
interludes, thought little of the thing. They carried him 
back through the trees to the palace, to his own room in 
the Northern wing, and that day and the next, as the fever 
grew, rumours went louder and louder in the palace. On 
the Friday, at eventide, as a candle chanced near the face 



THE DAUPHINE 93 

of the sick man, the doctor looked closer; and in the next 
hour, before midnight, the Princess Clothilde, talking in 
Madame de Marin's room in whispers to the Duke of Crois, 
opened a note from the Dauphine. She cried aloud: 
"They say it is the small-pox!" 

They dared not tell him. He had the assurance to 
demand the truth, and when he heard it he said: "At 
my age a man does not recover." He maintained from 
that moment, through the increasing torment and dis- 
figurement of his disease, a complete mastery over himself 
and even to some extent the power of ordering the Court. 
He saw to it that his grandson, the Dauphin, should not come 
near his room, for of all the royal families in Europe the 
French Bourbons alone had not been vaccinated. He 
accepted the services of his daughters. 

One thing alone he hesitated on, and that was to relin- 
quish the society of his Favourite. 

He was too proud and too silent a man for his contempo- 
raries or for ourselves to know the full cause of his hesitation. 
Passion at that moment it could not have been. The 
possibility of his survival he had himself denied, and his 
every phrase and act showed how clearly he felt the approach 
of death. He himself had drawn the secret of his malady 
from the reluctant Cardinal whose duty it was, as Grand 
Almoner, first to inform him of his danger, but whose worldly 
fear of consequence had kept him from speaking — though 
he was urged to his duty by every prelate at Court. The 
King was in no doubt as to the nature of the soul, nor as to 
the scandal which, under the special conditions of his 
throne, his one great frailty had given. He knew the 
Church; he could not, as might a philosopher, take refuge 
in the memory of good deeds to outweigh the evil, or (as 



94 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

might a monarch of a different civilisation) in the deep 
hypocrisies which there shield birth and wealth from self- 
knowledge. His Christian faith was strong and clean. 
Yet he hesitated. If he still clung to the Du Barry, it 
was perhaps, because nothing was left him in the visible 
world but the gaiety and the assiduous care which had 
endeared this woman to him. 

She kept near him throughout the first hours of his malady, 
and every evening, when the princesses had left their father's 
room, she Would come in by a private further door and 
sit beside the little camp bed on which he lay. She over- 
came all repugnance; she soothed his pustuled forehead 
with her hand. He felt, perhaps, as though to abandon her 
was a first breaking with life. 

The aged Archbishop of Paris, himself suffering griev- 
ously from the stone, bore, not without groaning, the jolting 
journey to Versailles; he came to undertake himself what 
the Grand Almoner dared not do — to demand the dismissal 
of the Favourite. He was not allowed into the King's 
room. The group of courtiers continually present in the 
outer chamber, the (Eil de Boeuf, could watch with much 
amusement the gestures of command and of refusal that 
passed between the Archbishop and the Duke of Richelieu 
in the antechamber beyond. At last he was admitted, but 
it was arranged that others should be present, and nothing 
passed between him and the King save a word of con- 
dolence from each for the other's suffering. 

It Was by no stimulation from without but by his own act 
that the King took the last step in his penance. Upon 
Tuesday the third of May, towards midnight, Madame 
du Barry being with him, as Was her custom, to tend him 
through the night, he said to her, in those brief sentences 



THE DAUPHINE 95 

of his which had for years forbidden discussion or reply, 
that he must prepare for his end and that she must leave 
him; he told her that a refuge was prepared, and that she 
should want for nothing. She stumbled half fainting from 
the room to the Minister whose career she had made, the 
Duke of Aiguillon, believing with justice that he was not 
ungrateful, and in his rooms she cried and lamented through 
what remained of darkness. 

With the morning the King gave D 'Aiguillon his orders, 
and that afternoon the Duke, worthily loyal although his 
career was ended, sent his own wife to take her in a hired 
carriage, without circumstance and therefore without dis- 
grace, to their country house some miles away. It was the 
thirty-fourth of the forty days. 

That evening the King asked Laborde, his valet, for 
Madame du Barry. The servant answered that she was 
gone. "Already?" he sighed, and her name was not 
heard again. 

Thursday and Friday passed : the first with a rally which 
the more foolish hoped would save the life of the King; 
the second with the disappointment of all that corrupt and 
intriguing clique which depended upon his recovery. 

Meanwhile the Dauphine kept her rooms. She knew 
what desperate court would be pressed upon her husband 
and herself were the doors to be opened; nor did the 
Dauphin give a single order of the hundred that were 
already solicited of him, save that all should be ready for 
the whole Court to leave for Choisy. Early upon the morn- 
ing of Saturday this seclusion was broken: long before the 
common hour of the palace, at half-past five, a roll of drums 
awakened its people, and the princess came down with all 
her ladies to see the Sacrament carried through Versailles. 



96 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

Between a double row of the guard, under the great 
canopy that was reserved for such solemnities, the priests 
carried the Viaticum, and about It in a long procession 
as It passed, were the torches and the candles. She stood 
with her sister-in-law at the head of the crowd in the great 
hall outside the bedroom door; she endured the stench 
of corruption that filled the air, though every window was 
open to the morning; she caught, by her tall stature and 
straight carriage, the scene that Was acting within. 

Between the purple robes and the surplices, in the ring 
of Waxen lights, she saw the old man, whom alone she had 
respected and indeed loved in her new home, attempt 
to raise himself, calling: ^' My great God has come to me. 
. My great God!" She saw him with what 
strength he had plucking the cotton cap from his head and 
failing in his effort to kneel. His face Was no longer the 
face she had known, but crusted dark and hideous, swollen, 
horrible. She heard the Grand Almoner repeat the King's 
strong phrase of repentance, passionately solemn, and she 
knew the voice so well that perhaps she also heard the 
mumble in which he urged its repetition. Then the doors 
closed; the Court dispersed. She regained her apartments 
and the isolation and the strain returned. They told her 
of his increasing delirium, of the crowds that came from 
Paris daily, of the certain approach of death. So 
Sunday and Monday went by — the thirty-eighth, the 
thirty-ninth day. 

The dawn of Tuesday broke upon a clear sky. It was 
the fortieth day. 

The spring on that fine morning turned to summer, and 
before noon the park was full of a crowd which moved as 
though on holiday. The Parisians had come increasingly 




LOUIS XVI. 
The principal bust at Versailles 



1 



^ 



THE DAUPHINE 97 

since Sunday into Versailles. The inns were full and at 
all the tables outside the eating-houses of the town the people 
eat their midday meal with merriment in the open air. 
Between the Park and the town, huge and isolated, already 
old, the palace alone was silent. There, each group shut 
close in its own rooms, awaited the one dismissal, another 
the fruit of long intrigue, another, in a mixture of eagerness 
and dread, the new weight of royalty. It was the tenth 
of May, and still the agony endured. A candle burnt in a 
window above the courtyard. Passing groups looked up 
at it furtively; grooms, with bridles ready in their hands, 
glanced at it from beneath the distant doors of the guard- 
room and saw it twice renewed, as one o'clock and two 
struck through the afternoon from the chimes of St. Louis. 
Three struck. They looked again and it was still shining. 

Within, his head supported by Laborde the valet, his 
mind still clear, the old King still attempted with his dis- 
torted lips the answers to the prayers for the dying. He 
heard them faintly and more faintly in that increasing 
darkness which each of us must face. \Mien the priest at 
last came to those loud words, "Go forth, thou Christian 
soul," his murmuring ceased. The candle at the window 
was extinguished. The clatter of horse-hoofs rose from 
the marble court and the jangling of stirrups against mount- 
ing spurs. The Duke of Bouillon came to the door of the 
room, stood before the silent crowd in the Qllil de Bceuf, 
and said with ritual solemnity: ^'Gentlemen, the King is 
deadr 

At that same hour on that same day, a British man-of- 
war sailed into Boston harbour. She bore orders to impose 
the tax on tea which ultimately raised America. 



VI 

THE THREE YEARS 

TUESDAY, THE 10th OF MAY, 1774, TO EASTER SUNDAY, APRIL 19, 1778 

FROM the death of Louis XV. to the close of the 
summer of 1777 is a period of somewhat over three 
years. In those three years the fates of the French 
monarchy and of the Queen were decided. For though no 
great catastrophe marked them nor even any considerable 
fruit of policy, and though an onlooker would have said no 
more than that something a little disappointing had, in the 
process of these years, chilled the first enthusiasm for the 
new reign, yet we can to-day discover within their limits 
most of those origins from which the ruin of the future was 
to come. 

For the Queen especially, whom hitherto her minority, 
her seclusion and the deliberate silence of her childhood 
had guarded, the opportunities for action which her hus- 
band's accession suddenly offered were opportunities of 
fate, and the three years with which this chapter has to deal 
were for her young and exalted innocence of eighteen like 
that short Week of spring when seeds are sown in a garden: 
they were a brief season of warmth, of vigour, and of clarity 
during which circumstance sowed for her in every variety 
the seeds of misfortune and of death. All is there: the 
advent of an uneasy gaiety; the solace of gems, of cards, 
of excessive friendships; the vivid but wholly personal, 
erratic and capricious intervention in matters of State; the 



THE THREE YEARS 99 

simple confidence in the policy of her mother's Austrian 
government and the continual support of it; the enmities 
which all active natures provoke, but which hers had a talent 
for confirming; the friction of such an activity against the 
hard and, to her, the alien qualities of the French mind — 
all these, which the princess could try to ignore when her 
husband was but heir and she in her retirement, appear with 
the first months of her liberty as Queen, strike root, and are 
seen above ground before she has completed her twenty- 
second year. And with these positive irritants their negativ.e 
reactions also come: the Court assumes its divisions; the 
stories and the songs and the nicknames begin against her; 
the popular legend concerning her is conceived ; the trend of 
the Orleans faction in antagonism to her is established, and 
a new generation contemporary with, or but slightly senior 
to, her own has become fixed within the same three years in 
a direction which — though none then saw it — could not 
but destroy her in the progress of years. 

To understand in what Way the common accidents of 
that brief three years' term moved to their great effects it 
is necessary to know two things: first, the physical infirm- 
ity under which Louis XV. suffered, and, secondly, the 
nature of the Bourbon Crown he wore ; for it is the conjunc- 
tion of such an infirmity. with such an office that lends to the 
first years of his reign and to the first errors of his wife 
their capital importance in the history of that one woman 
and of the world. 



Louis, it had first been whispered, and Was now upon 
his accession commonly asserted, could have no heir. 

WTien first the mere form of marriage between him in 



100 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

his boyhood and Marie Antoinette (a child) had been 
solemnised, no public and no familiar regard was paid to 
the relations between them. The great ceremony was 
necessarily esteemed a solemn and irrevocable betrothal 
rather than a wedlock, and (as I have already said) it was 
taken for granted that in some two or three years the process 
of nature would continue the royal line. 

But as the princess advanced to her sixteenth, to her 
seventeenth year; as her upstanding and vigorous youth 
achieved first a full growth, then ripeness, then maturity, 
and yet provoked no issue, the common explanation of 
such an accident could not but be generally given and the 
impotence of the Dauphin was universally accepted. At 
eighteen, in the last autumn of the old King's reign, the 
young wife had stood apparent and triumphant, clothed 
with a charm which, if it was not that of beauty, was 
certainly that of exuberant life; a whole ball-room had 
been arrested at her entrance; the crowds of Paris had 
quickened at her approach; the lively look, the deep brows, 
and the full hair, tender and vaguely red, which Fersen had 
seen suddenly revealed, were those of a woman informed 
with an accumulated and expectant vitality. It was 
not in her that the defect could lie. Louis, so it plainly 
seemed, was deficient and was in title only her husband. 

A conjunction of this kind is not uncommon even in an 
active, healthy, and laborious lineage of the middle rank; 
among the wealthy it is frequent, in the genealogy of 
families which carry a public function, such as those of 
monarchs or of an oligarchy, for all the careful choice 
which their marriages involve, it is often present. Such 
accidents are provided for. In many cases probably, in 
some certainly, a suppositious child is introduced; when 



THE THREE YEARS 101 

that course is difficult or repugnant the situation is acknowl- 
edged, the consort chooses between her devotions and a 
lover; all the planning and all the necessary preparation 
which attach to the succession regard the brother or cousin, 
who is henceforward accepted as the heir, and his position 
is the more highly established from the contrast his vigour 
may afford to the paucity of the reigning incumbent. 

I say such a conjunction is of a known type in history; 
there were precedents for action and a certain course to be 
pursued. Monsieur, the King's brother, would have 
attracted the service and respect to which his then vigorous 
intellect was fitted. The Queen's vagaries would have 
been contemptuously excused, for she would have stood 
apart from the line of succession, and her character would 
have been indifferent to her husband's subjects. The 
Crown as an institution would have suffered little, though 
its immediate holder would have lost personal prestige, had 
the conjecture of Louis' impotence, which was, upon the 
King's accession, common to the Court and the populace, 
been confirmed. 

Now that conjecture was, as the future showed, erro- 
neous. A very careful, sceptical, and universal observer 
might have discovered, even as early as this year of Louis' 
accession that it was erroneous. 

In the first place the gestures, habits, and character of 
the King were not such as should be associated with this 
kind of imbecility. His body was indeed unhealthy and 
diseased; it was the body of a nervous, overgrown, loose- 
limbered child, inherited from a nervous father and from an 
exhausted race; a body which nature would have removed 
as it removed his son's, had not the doctors built up upon 
its doomed frame an artificial bulk of flesh. I say he was 



102 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

diseased, but not in the manner then believed. The 
febrile attachment to violence, the lack of humour, the 
weary eye, which betray an insufficiency of sex and which 
we so frequently suffer in political life and at the university, 
were quite absent in Louis. Contrariwise he was good- 
humoured and kindly (saving to cats), very fond of hard 
riding and capable in that exercise; he was further of an 
even though astonishingly slow judgment and possessed 
that desire to make (to file, saw, fit, design, ply a trade of 
hand and eye) which is an invariable accompaniment of 
virility. He loved and practised mechanical arts, such 
as the locksmith's or the watchmaker's. There was noth- 
ing in him of what is nowadays called (by a French 
euphemism) "The Intellectual." 

Were positive evidence lacking such general contrasts 
between what he was supposed to be and what he Was would 
still have great weight ; but evidence more exact can be dis- 
covered. The letters written by Marie Antoinette to her 
mother afford it. 

Maria Theresa was in an increasing torment, as each 
passing month excited her bewilderment, lest her daughter 
should furnish no heir to the French throne and the object 
at once of her strong motherly aftection and of her political 
scheme should fail. Her questions Were frequent, urgent 
and clear: her daughter replied to them in terms which a 
very little reading will sufiice to illumine. Marie Antoinette 
Was young and, as I have said, essentially pure; she did not 
fully comprehend the nature of a situation which Was under- 
mining her serenity and gravely marring her entry into life, 
but she was able both to express her dissatisfaction and yet to 
assure the Empress upon more than one occasion that she 
had at last a reasonable hope of maternity. These hope^ 



THE THREE YEARS 103 

were in each case disappointed. That such hopes, on the one 
hand, certainly existed, and that the whole atmosphere of 
her married life was, upon the other, false and almost 
intolerable, depended upon the fact that Louis suffered 
from a partial — and only a partial — mechanical impedi- 
ment. This impediment a painful operation would suffice 
to remove; but the knowledge that it was but partial, the 
divergent advice of doctors and the lethargy which invariably 
deferred his decisions, all impelled the young man towards 
procrastination, with the result that in a few months — 
the brief period immediately and before his accession — his 
wife had learned that fever of the mind which accompanies 
alternations of nervous incertitude; she had weighing upon 
her a perpetual and acute anxiety which was the more 
corroding in that it contained so considerable an element 
of physical ill-ease. 

The detail is highly intimate and would merit no 
place in any biography but this. It must be fixed, and 
has been fixed here, first because to neglect it is to ignore 
the misfortune from which (if from one origin) flowed the 
destruction certainly of the Queen, and very probably of 
the French Monarchy itself — a matter of moment to 
every European; secondly, because history has never yet 
given it its true place nor fully set forth its nature and 
importance. 

In such a situation Marie Antoinette's quick nature took 
refuge in every stimulant ; wine she disliked — it was among 
her few but marked eccentricities that throughout her life 
she would taste nothing but water — but gaming, jewels, 
doubtful books, many and new voices about her, violent 
contrasts, caprice upon caprice, unexpected visits, sudden 
passions for this or that new friend, excessive laughter (and 



104 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

excessive pique), emotions seized wherever they could be 
found — watching in merry vigils for summer dawns, masked 
balls that took up all the winter nights, escapades: in a 
word, a swirl of the fantastic and the new became for her a 
necessity that — had it taken some one form — would have 
been called a vice. Her dissipation was driven, as vice is 
driven, with a spur ; it was compatible, as vice is compatible 
with her original virtues; it produced, as vice produces, 
a progressive interior ill-ease. She was a tortured woman 
in those years. 

Children became a craving to her. 

One day as she went, with the lady who was supposed to 
control the etiquette of her life, as she went sadly in her 
coach along the western road, she turned off it along a by- 
lane for her pleasure, and reached that village of St. Michel 
which lies upon the slope of the hill above Bougival. As she 
passed through the village in her grandeur and took the 
Louveciennes road, she saw a peasant child and, by a 
sudden but most intense and profound impulse, caught it 
up and said she would make it hers. It was a little tiny 
boy, still a baby, toddling upon the road ; it had been chris- 
tened James; the name of its parents was Amand. The 
freak was good news for them; they blessed her, and she 
Went away. And the child was to be adopted and brought 
up at her expense, and she was to Watch it in Versailles. 

Very many years later his name came up again, obscure, 
but fixed, in the roll-call of a battle, and We shall read it 
once more, stamped across the strange sequence of her life. 



If anyone desires to see, in a very modern and tawdry 
mirror, what evil had possessed the mind of this well-born 



1 



THE THREE YEARS 105 

lady, let him watch (from some distance) a certain financial 
world in London and that cosmopolitan gang in Paris to 
which that world is allied by blood and in whose support 
— whenever it is endangered — they are to be found, 
for in Paris and London they are one. With far more 
refinement and with infinitely greater variety, she (like those 
modern money-dealers) sought in a rush of fantastic and 
novel experience to assuage a thirst. They have no plea 
save the coarseness of their lineage. She had for excuse 
the gnawing of a position which none about her compre- 
hended and which she herself, though her body resented it, 
saw but dimly with her young mind, and which disturbed 
her as a confused, intolerable thing. 

From within, therefore, she is amply to be excused; but 
consider the effect of her fever upon those who saw her. 
Consider the effect of this new manner of hers upon the 
public function of the French Monarchy. 

The French have, with their own hands, destroyed the 
conception of "a king": in Europe to-day we look around 
and find nothing of monarchy remaining. A few impover- 
ished symbols, a few indebted, a few insufliciently salaried 
men, of whose true character the public knows nothing, 
afford or do not afford unifying titles for a bureaucracy 
there, an oligarchy here : in Italy a national name, in Spain 
a moribund tradition. But that monarchy which the 
Gaulish energy had drawn out of the stuff of old Rome 
Was another matter; it was a sacramental alliance between 
an idea and a thing. 

The Idea was that of the Gallic formula *' without author- 
ity there is no life" — for authority is authorship: this 
Gallic formula also sustains the faith. 

The Thing was one lineage of actual living men : devoted 



106 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

from father to son — sacrificed almost as in a public sac- 
rifice — condemned to the perpetual burden of being mixed 
into this Idea and of supporting the burden of its intensity 
and power. 

There had descended from the Merovingian and the 
Carolingian families to the Capetian, bearing a power 
that increased with every century, the conception of a creative 
executive made flesh ; an executive that should reside in the 
living matter of a family of men who should be seen, known, 
touched, loved or hated; who should rapidly pronounce 
new and necessary laws, actively preserve the yet more 
necessary body of ancient and fundamental custom, observe 
in public the religion of the community, and, above all, 
lead in battle. That was the role; that was the mould, 
the bond of heredity forced many an incongruity into that 
mould (a child sometimes and sometimes a madman), 
yet — so short is one human life in the general story of a 
nation — the gap thus formed was rapidly filled by a suc- 
cessor, and the permament impression remained of a 
soldier incarnating a community of soldiers. 

This institution had now endured for much more than 
a thousand years. This Gallic institution had impressed 
itself (here, as in Germany, by imitation; there, as in 
Britain, by direct importation) upon all the civilisation 
of the West. It had grown old, as must all human institu- 
tions that have no direct sustenance from forces outside 
time; but even so it maintained a mysterious vitality. 
Its kings were anointed. It held a sort of compact with 
the Divine, and in this its old age was still alive with a 
salutary if a grotesque publicity. 

The King and Queen of France were the least protected 
of any in the realm from insult, satire, and gibe ; even 



THE THREE YEARS 107 

where their own law protected them a general conspiracy, 
as it were, the instinct of all society, defended the 
pamphleteer. 

The King and Queen were publicly owned: all they 
had was public money; all they did they did before a crowd. 
Every week they dined at a table in a vast hall. Their 
nobles stood by but did not eat — before them a thousand 
or (according to the weather) ten thousand of the populace 
defiled curiously and unceasingly. They prayed in public. 
They were expected to receive in public the applause or 
the condemnation of all. They were public for the destruc- 
tion of secret things, conspiracies, masonries, Templars, 
trusts, rings. They were publicly approached by any 
at random and publicly claimed as the public redressers of 
wrong — always in theory and often in actual fact. Nay, 
their physical acts were public. They dressed and undressed 
before an audience — or rather were dressed and undressed 
by these. The birth of every royal child was witnessed by 
a mob crowding the Queen's chamber. 

The vast inconvenience of such a part was but one 
aspect of its sanctity, and the Crown united, as in the 
heart of a mystery, the functions of Victim and of Lord. 

Amid the great new wealth of the eighteenth century, 
and in the glare of its brilliant new intelligence, it may be 
imagined with what a fence of tradition and precedent 
public opinion and its own nature insisted on defending 
this national centre. The anecdotes of that rigid, minute, 
and often inhuman etiquette are too well known to need 
repetition here. Two instances may suffice. 

The Queen could drink nothing by night or by day but 
from the hand of the highest in rank of the women present, 
nor could this last accept the glass and the water save 



108 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

from the hand of a page. The King must not eat at all 
until he had performed an ablution like a priest : the vessels 
of this and the napkin were sacred; rather than put them 
to a profane use, when they had once done their service 
they were destroyed by fire. 

Such extravagances in the old age of an institution 
lend themselves to ridicule as do (for instance) the fantastic 
ceremonies of our House of Commons or the comic-opera 
costumes of our court officials and of peers. But though, 
isolated, they present this weakness, collectively, and seen 
in relation to the function they serve, such survivals have 
a meaning, and a consideration of such ceremonial helps 
men to a comprehension of the institution it surrounds. 

Conceive, then — for it is the note of all this chapter — 
the impact of such a mood as that of the distracted Queen 
upon such a Court, stiff with such traditions and living 
under such a bright beam of publicity, the mark of a 
million eyes all keen to discern whatever trifle was done 
between midday and dawn! Marie Antoinette chafed 
impatiently against this central national institution. The 
fever now upon her caused her always to despise and 
sometimes to neglect the rules that were of the essence of 
her position. The moral and internal constraint which 
tortured her inflamed her to "live her life";- but for 
those of great wealth and opportunity such a mood is and" 
must be dissipation ; dissipation in its fullest sense : the dis- 
persion not only of character and of self-discipline, but 
of responsibility, of externals even, and at last of power. 
It meant, and necessarily meant, the patronage of those 
far below her and their consequent estrangement; the 
contempt of those immediately beneath her and their 
consequent enmity. 



THE THREE YEARS 109 

Just after the old King's death the Court was at 
La Muette. She must needs, to prove her liberty, go up 
and talk familiarly to an old gardener like any Lady Bounti- 
ful. The old gardener's annoyance is not recorded; that 
of her ladies is. They complained to the King, who was 
troubled, but who, knowing the truth, answered, "Let 
her be." 

That same day, when a deputation of the Burgesses' 
wives paid her their court, coming from the city at her gate 
and full of ceremony, she could do nothing more dignified 
than giggle at their awkwardness and at their dress. In 
the intervals of, according to each, a pompous greeting, 
she must whisper to one or other of her ladies most unpom- 
pously; the very servants were rendered uneasy by her 
manner. 

In how many ways and how rapidly this mood (this 
physical, fatal, necessary mood) was to wear down her 
position immediately after her accession to the throne 
many examples will show. The best and the most general 
aspect from which one may first regard it is her attempted 
immixture in public affairs, for that also was a fretful and 
personal thing, part of her mood. 



The first six or seven months of the new reign cover 
the period which was officially that of mourning for Louis 
XV. and are for the general historian of this importance: 
that in them was fixed the new ministerial tradition which 
culminated in the summoning of the States-General. 

This new tradition owed nothing to the Queen. She 
was hardly aware of its presence. For her the choice of 
new Ministers was a personal and almost a domestic 



no MARIE ANTOINETTE 

business in which she somehow had a right (and could find 
it entertaining) to play a part — she knew not what or how. 
That part of hers turned out, as a fact, a small part and 
indecisive, utterly without plan ; but such as it was it marks 
her necessity for action and change, and exhibits her place 
beside the King. In the intervals of choosing a new hair- 
dresser and a new dressmaker, she paused now half an 
hour, now an hour, in the cabinet, hearing names which 
she hardly knew, and giving random advice which must 
have strained her audience to the very limits of toleration. 
It was not mere Austrian action. Her brother the 
Emperor would often beg her not to meddle; the Austrian 
ambassador, Mercy, deplored her innocence of affairs and 
her inability to follow any one interest for one hour. Her 
mother wrote affectionately and worriedly, giving her the ,! 
stale old advice of supporting Vienna — but fearing her 
capacity to do so. Meanwhile, the Queen herself acted j, 
from the simple motive of being seen about, and added to 
this the equally simple motives of private tastes. Thus she 
would have restored Choiseul to some ofiice. He came 
up a month after the accession, and she greeted him very 
kindly. He had helped to make her Queen, he was the 
traditional ally of Vienna, and though Vienna certainly 
did not want him now, Marie Antoinette went by the name 
and its associations alone: she judged as a child would 
judge. The King, who had no intention of accepting 
Choiseul, made a little awkward conversation with him, the 
opening of which turned pleasantly upon the old man's, j 
baldness, and next day Choiseul went back home, "to see 
to the tedding of his hay." 

Again, the choice of Maurepas for chief Minister, four 
weeks before, was not — as has been represented — hers. 



THE THREE YEARS 111 

The King chose his father's old friend rather for permanent 
adviser and companion than as a first Minister — which 
title indeed he never received, and that Maurepas entered 
at all was the work not even of the King himself, but of his 
aunt, Mme. Adelaide. In the confusion of the first two 
days when Sartines, Choiseul, Machault were all possible 
as prime ministers and all discussed, Madame Adelaide 
repeatedly suggested Maurepas' name. To her and her 
sisters he was a tradition, part of a time which these old 
maids looked back to with regret as the last time of dignity, 
before mistresses had destroyed their father's Court and 
half exiled them to their apartments. 

Maurepas was seventy-three; he had left office between 
forty and fifty, and had done so from a quarrel with the 
Pompadour. This alone recommended him to Louis XV. 's 
daughter; that he should have been untouched by the 
vile interregnum of the Du Barry recommended him still 
more. Madame Adelaide had known him in power when, 
as a girl of seventeen, the eldest of the sisters, she was cer- 
tain of life, in tune with her great position, and pleased 
with all she saw. Now after twenty-five years, which had 
been increasingly marred by a distant and bitter isolation 
from the Court, his name recurred to her as that of a fellow- 
sufferer and a memory of her youth. Madame Adelaide's 
devoted service in her father's last illness (she had caught 
the small-pox herself in attending him) gravely increased 
the weight of her advice. It was through her that Louis 
XVI. received the old man, and, once received, he remained. 
True, MarieAntoinette had carried the message to the King 
from his aunt, but she had done no more than this. 

If it is asked why, with so little influence, the Queen's 
perpetual interference was none the less permitted, and 



112 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

why this girl of eighteen, vivacious as she was ignorant, 
might ceaselessly bustle in and out of the council chamber, 
the answer is not that she was Queen — for no Queen had 
yet acted thus at Versailles, nor would any woman conscious 
of power have done so — but first that her whole self was 
now restless beyond bearing, and next that the King was 
ashamed to withstand her whom, afflicted as he was, he 
could hardly propose to command or regulate. With every 
fresh opening of the council door she made an enemy, with 
none a friend; but Louis all the while could only answer, 
"Let her be." 

In one thing only during these months had she a clear 
object, and that was not a policy: she was determined 
to be rid of the Du Barry's name. That woman was far 
away, exiled to Burgundy from the moment of the accession, 
to return afterwards to Louveciennes, but some of her clique 
remained, hated by all the populace and half the Court as 
much as by the Queen. With so much support Marie 
Antoinette succeeded. Three weeks after the death of 
Louis XV., D'Aiguillon was relieved of the department of 
Foreign Affairs: the grant of public money which he 
received on his resignation — it was but £20,000 — would 
seem to us in modern England pitifully small, for we take 
it for granted that public officials should have a share in 
the public funds. But it is significant of the time and of 
the French temper that the grant was vigorously opposed 
and was obtained only on the personal demand of old 
Maurepas, who (by one of those coincidences so frequent in 
aristocracies) happened to be the uncle of this his chief 
political opponent. 

Here was Marie Antoinette's one success. The Austrian 
Court and Embassy had desired to keep D'Aiguillon — he 



THE THREE YEARS 113 

could be played upon. Marie Antoinette had rejected 
their advice, she had gone, day after day, to the King, until 
he had consented to deprive D'Aiguillon of his post — 
and immediately her deficiency was apparent. To deprive 
D'Aiguillon was, in politics, not necessary, and, if accom- 
plished, not final. To find someone for the Foreign Office 
who should at once be able and yet work contentedly 
under old Maurepas was of both immediate and of weighty 
importance. She refused to interest herself in the matter! 

Luckily for France, Vergennes, then the representative 
of Louis at the Court of Stockholm, was chosen by the 
good judgment of the King, in spite of an impossible 
oriental wife. 

Vergennes, approaching his sixtieth year, tenacious, 
silent, industrious, highly experienced, and microscopic, 
as it were, in the detail of diplomacy, was just such an one 
as the French needed to conserve the forces of their nation, 
to balance the smaller states against the rivals of Versailles 
and to choose the very moment for the attack on England 
which, later, was to establish the United States. It is 
probable that, but for him, in the embarrassment of French 
finance and the consequent weakness of French arms, the 
nation would have fallen into some German conflict or have 
been abused before some German contention. As it was, the 
French owe in great part to Vergennes that peaceful accumu- 
lation of energy which permitted the revolution to triumph. 

In the nomination of this considerable diplomatic force 
the Queen had no part at all. 

She had no part in the nomination of Turgot. 

It is difficult to write the name of "Turgot" without admit- 
ting a digression, though such a digression adapts itself 
but ill to any account of the Queen. 



114 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

Turgot is the name that dominates the first two years 
of the reign for every historian. The time has hardly 
come to criticise him. Criticism of his faults is easy; a 
full appreciation is difficult, so near are we still to his time, 
and so exactly did he represent the spirit which was at that 
moment germinating in every intellect, so active was he in 
its expression. The over- simple economies, the plain 
egalitarian political theory, the positive scepticism (the 
Faith was then at its lowest throughout the world), the 
glorious self-possession, the rectitude, yes, and the interior 
glow of the "Philosophers," all the Genius of the Republic 
was incarnate in this man. When upon that singular date 
(it was the 14th of July) he entered the Ministry, 
there entered with him the figure, winged for victory yet 
austere, whose mission it was to create the great and perilous 
Europe we now know. I mean the Republic. Already 
Napoleon was born. 

Marie Antoinette had no knowledge of this spirit. It 
had not approached her. She knew vaguely that it was 
indifferent to her religion (to which the very young woman 
was already sensibly though slightly attached). She knew 
much more clearly from current talk that it (and Turgot) 
stood at that moment especially for Retrenchment; and that 
word Retrenchment she approved, for she had no conception 
of the sensations that might ensue upon it to her own life 
if from a word it should become a policy. And Turgot 
himself had spared her sensibilities by doubling her 
pin-money. 

I say she had no part in the nominating of Turgot 
in his fall she was to have too great a part. 

By the end of August the new Ministry and its policy 
were complete. All the Du Barry gang and all the memo- 



THE THREE YEARS 115 

ries of Louis XV. 's end were gone — burnt and hanged in 
effigy by the populace as well. In their place sat a council 
whose actual head and principal figure was the young 
King, slow, large, assiduous, freckled, pale, in a perpetual 
obese anxiety, ardently seeking an issue to the entanglement 
of his realm ; whose senior was the chiselled old Maurepas, 
intensely national, witty, experienced in men, but neither 
instructed nor of a recent practice in affairs; whose foreign 
affairs were dealt with by the methodical gravity of Ver- 
gennes; whose navy was in the honest hands of Sartines, 
and whose finance — the pivot of every policy, but in 
France of '74 life and death — lay under the complete con- 
trol of Turgot. 

I have said that finance had become for the French in 
1774 a matter of life and death; and the point is of such 
capital importance to the Queen's story that I must beg 
the reader to consider it here, at the outset of her reign. 

What was the economic entanglement of the French 
Crown at this moment ? The reply to that question is 
not part of Marie Antoinette's character and conduct, but 
it so persistently and gravely affected her life and it is so 
dominating a feature of revolutionary history that a clear 
conception of it must be entertained before any general 
understanding of the period can be achieved. Not that the 
financial difficulty was a main cause of the Revolution — 
to assert as much would be to fall into the puerile inver- 
sion which makes of history an economic phenomenon — 
but that the financial difficulty was a limiting condition 
which perpetually checked and perverted the thought 
of the time whenever that thought attempted to express 
itself in action. 

The clearest background agamst which to appreciate the 



116 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

finance of old monarchical France is that of the England 
which was its triumphant rival. 

The United Kingdom had at that time less than half the 
population of France. The territory of England was in 
much the same proportion — at least, her arable and 
industrial territory. Her white colonial population was 
larger then, in proportion to her home population, than it 
is now, but she had not then the full wealth of India to tax 
nor the vast revenues now drawn, both in usury and in true 
profit * — from Australasia, Southern America, and Africa. 
In other words, the prosperity of England at that time was 
domestic and real; it contained no parasitic or perilous 
element which a war could interrupt and a defeat destroy. 
This England bore with ease a national debt of over 130 
million pounds. She was about to engage in a struggle 
which would nearly double that debt, and yet to feel no 
weakness. She raised a revenue of ten to eleven millions, 
which in a few years rose without effort to fifteen — then 
at the end of it all she was free to triple her debt during 
the great European war against Napoleon, and yet trium- 
phantly to increase, and, when the war was over, to survive, 
the only nation with a credit, and at once the bank and 
the workshop of Europe. 

France, so much larger in area and population and 
inheriting so superior a tradition of magnitude, had all but 
failed. With citizens double the English in number, and 
with an arable soil in proportion, the French Crown could 
only with the utmost difiiculty attract to the exchequer a 
sum of barely twelve — at the most and counting every 
expedient, thirteen — million pounds from the national 

1 1 mean by usury interest levied upon unproductive loans; I mean by true profit the share of produce legiti- 
mately claimed by the lender of funds which have been put to productive use. 



^ 



THE THREE YEARS 117 

income. Briefly, England could support with ease a larger 
debt than could this neighbouring nation, twice her size; 
England could spend with prodigality as much as that 
nation was compelled to spend with parsimony; and 
England could raise without effort a revenue already 
equal, soon to be superior, to that which the rival govern- 
ment could but barely extract from its subjects. 

Nor does this comparison exhaust the contrast between 
financial health and disease upon either side of the Channel. 
England thus prosperous was increasingly at ease; France 
thus exhausted was increasingly embarrassed. Deficit 
followed deficit; that expenditure should exceed revenue 
had become a normal annual incident publicly discounted, 
nay, a sort of fixed ratio appeared between what should 
be and what was the income of the government, and the 
expenditure exceeded revenue with a solemn regularity 
much in the proportion of 44 to 37. In the American War, 
which either nation was approaching, England, defeated, 
was to incur 170 million of debts, and yet to emerge, a few 
years after the defeat, financially stronger than ever in the 
Wars of the Revolution. France, victorious, was to incur 
but a third of that liability, and yet in the Revolution 
France was compelled to declare herself insolvent. 

Why did so startling a contrast appear.'' To us to-day 
it is almost inconceivable. The French are now some- 
what less in population than the English, they pretend to no 
serious empire beyond the Mediterranean, yet they raise for 
national purposes a larger revenue, and they raise it with 
far greater facility; they support a debt double our own, 
without troubling the least gullible and most thrifty invest- 
ing public in Europe. Considerable additions to their total 
liability hardly affect their credit, while England's falls by 



118 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

a quarter of its index upon the issues of a hundred and fifty 
milhons. The value of their agricultural land rises rapidly, 
as does that of their urban; they find public money for 
enterprises which we scout or neglect. Their universities, 
though dependent on public funds, abound; their national 
church, deprived of official assistance, flourishes on but a 
fraction of their surplus wealth; their historical buildings 
are kept up in magnificence upon public funds. It is 
difficult, I say, for an Englishman to try to appreciate 
the overwhelming economic advantage which, under 
George III., England enjoyed over the Bourbons, who were 
her rivals ; because in the course of a century, and especially 
of the present generation, the tables have been turned. 
It is England now that is in doubt as to her financial posi- 
tion and her fiscal methods. It is in England that money 
is lacking for necessary social reforms. It is English 
credit which fluctuates with violence, and English direct 
taxation which is strained to breaking point. 

In the time of which I write all these perils and disad- 
vantages attached to France and to France alone. The 
France which England faced in the great struggle was 
a France labouring in anxiety for money, and the cause 
of that increasing pressure is apparent to History: the 
■method of public economics had failed in France then as 
perhaps it is now failing here in England. 

Men inherit, and of necessity every generation is shut 
in with custom. Who would in England to-day dream 
of taxing the mass of Englishmen — or rather, of taxing 
them directly and to their own knowledge ? The very idea 
is laughable! There may be coming into a coal-miner's 
cottage in Durham twice the income of a clerk, but who 
would dare send in an assessment or talk of a shilling in 



THE THREE YEARS 119 

the pound ? The clerk must pay ; the miner go free — for 
such is the tradition of the Six. Who would rate the houses 
of the wealthiest class as the houses of the middle class are 
rated ? It would seem madness. So, but in a more acute 
fashion, did the financial system of France suffer at the 
end of the eighteenth century. Its data, its conventions 
were those of an older state of society long departed. It 
pre-supposed the manor, and the manor was dead; it pre- 
supposed the self-contained countryside at a moment when 
the various provinces of the whole State had long been 
intimately bound together by commerce and when strong 
international links of exchange had already begun to arise. 
The evil w^as a fiscal system out of touch with the realities 
of the time. The remedy was a violent and rapid remodel- 
ling of that system. All could perceive the evil, many the 
remedy; but custom and the collective force of private 
avarice in the individual minds, checked, and checked 
sharply, with the blind control of a natural force, all reform 
that attempted to act and to do. The attempt at reform 
was baulked, as a natural force baulks human purpose, by 
a million atomic actions. The million separate interests 
refused it. 

For such an attempt, for such audacity, Turgot with 
his austere, convinced, and isolated mind, was better suited 
than any other man; yet even he in a very few months had 
refused to level the hard-grained social knots which blunted 
every tool of the reformer who would level the inequalities 
of the State. Within two years his attempt had failed and 
he had resigned — but while the resistance of the tax-payer 
counted for much in his resignation, the increasing ill- 
balance of his young Queen counted for more. 

During the first part of his administration of finance 



120 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

her ill-balance was not so marked as to give promise of 
what was to come. No folly, no conspicuous extravagance 
marred the first weeks of her reign — her inchoate and girl- 
ish interruptions into the Council were of ill-omen; but as 
the new Court settled down into its stride, accumulated its 
first traditions and began to take on a character of its own, 
her aspect in the public eye was daily fixed with greater 
clearness, and the impression so conveyed to a nation 
already in rapid transition was a further element of irri- 
tation and confusion. 

For the permanently present threat of poverty and 
embarrassment, which with every year corroded more and 
more deeply the public service and rendered less and less 
stable the general equilibrium of the State, lent to the 
habits the Queen was about to form, and still more to the 
public exaggeration of those habits, a gravity they could 
never otherwise have assumed. It was part of her lot that 
she could not, from the very nature of her position, under- 
stand the relationship between her petty extravagances 
and the popular ill-ease. 

She was right. Her extravagance, such as it was, came 
slowly — nay, though showing excess in her character, it 
was never really excessive in amount ; the sums we mention 
when we speak of it are trifling when we compare them 
with the financial debauchery of our own age. Why, that 
whole annual increase in her allowance which Turgot has 
been blamed for making would not have paid for one night's 
riot in the house of some one of our London Jews, nor 
even when her expenses did exceed the limit she should have 
set upon them; even when, as month followed month, the 
love of jewellery and the distraction of cards involved her 
in private debt, the sums so wasted in a whole year were 



THE THREE YEARS 121 

not what some of our moderns have scattered in a few days. 
Her total debts after two years were less than £20,000! 
Moreover, careless and wasteful as the girl was for those 
well-ordered times, her excesses never bore an appreciable 
proportion to the scale of the public embarrassment. Her 
difficulties were never so great but that the sale of a farm 
or two could meet them. Had the Bourbon Crown enjoyed 
a private as well as public revenue, her lack of economy 
and of order would perhaps never have been heard of. 

But it is the characteristic of any morbid condition 
that the slightest irritant produces an effect vastly beyond 
its due consequence. The financial embarrassment from 
which the Kingdom suffered may or may not have been 
relievable by the plain and harsh methods of Turgot — 
it is a question to which I will return — but even if they 
were so relievable, their immediate application could not 
but be an aggravation of popular suffering; and just in the 
years when increasing economic difficulty and sharp econ- 
omic remedies for it were catching the public between two 
millstones of poverty below and retrenchment above, the 
populace had presented to them, upon a pinnacle whence 
she could be observed on every side, a young woman 
who in some sense summed up the State, and yet who, 
in mere externals at least, showed a growing disregard for 
method and a pursuit of every emotion that might distract 
her from what the French thought her duty, but what she 
knew to be the tragedy of her marriage. 

The mourning of the Court forbade display until the 
autumn of 1774, and though with the autumn and the 
winter there was some relaxation of ancient rules and some 
revolt already observable upon Marie Antoinette's part yet 
there against the fixed and inherited rules of her station. 



122 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

was nothing which had yet seized the popular imagin- 
ation nor even gravely affected her position within the 
narrow circle of her equals. It was not until the next year, 
1775, that the error and the misfortune began. 

It had long been intended that her brother, the Emperor 
Joseph, should visit France, and by his more active 
character persuade Louis XVI. to an operation which 
he perpetually postponed. The repeated adjournment 
of this visit (which was to resolve so many doubts) 
was among the fatal elements of the Queen's early life. 
In the place of that sovereign, the youngest child of the 
Hapsburgs, Maximilian, little more than a boy, fat, and 
what would have been called in a lower rank of society 
deficient, waddled into the astonished court at La Muette 
in the opening of February. 

The accident of his arrival did neither the Queen nor 
the Court any great hurt among the crowds of the capital. 
His startling ignorance and heavy lack of breeding amused 
the crowd; they were glad to repeat the amusing anecdotes 
of his awkwardness as later, in their Republican armies, 
they were glad to caricature his obesity when he had 
achieved the ecclesiastical dignity of a princely arch- 
bishopric. But among her intimate equals the visit was 
disastrous. The Princes of the Blood insisted upon receiv- 
ing his call before they paid their court to him, since he 
was travelling incognito. It was a point (to them) of grave 
moment. The Q\ieen rubbed it in with spirit. She would 
not let him pay such a call. She told them that her brother 
"had other sights to see in Paris and could put off seeing 
the Princes of the Blood." The King stood by during the 
quarrel, irresolute, upon the whole supporting his wiie. 
The King's brothers for the moment supported her also; 



THE THREE YEARS 123 

but the kernel of the affair lay in her disregard of inherited 
tradition, in her contempt for those fine shades of mutual 
influence and deference which to the French are all-impor- 
tant indications of authority, but which to her were mean- 
ingless extravagances of parade. Chartres, during the prog- 
ress of what he thought an insult, she a piece of common 
sense, deliberately left the Court, publicly showed him- 
self in Paris, and was applauded for his spirit. 

This wilfulness, this picked quarrel, sprang from the 
same root as, and was similar to, whatever other fevers 
disturbed her entry into her twentieth year. 

The Queen conceived a violent affection for the Princesse 
de Lamballe, a young woman of the Blood, but Piedmon- 
tese, the widow of a debauchee — a simpering, faithful, 
stupid, sentimental and most unfortunate young woman, 
often gushing in her joy, next in grief wringing her enormous 
hands. It was an attachment almost hysterical and subject to 
extreme fluctuations. The Queen conceived a second attach- 
ment, with the opening of this year 1775 for another woman, 
as good-natured indeed, but more solid and more capable 
of intrigue, than Madame de Lamballe, the Comtesse de 
Polignac. In the empty society of the one, in the full and 
babbling coterie of the other, Marie Antoinette expended the 
greater part of her energy. Finding to hand, as it were, the 
De Guemenees (and Madame de Guemenee constitutionally 
fixed as "Governess to the children of France" — chil- 
dren that did not exist), she plunged also into the 
Guemenee set, and there she discovered, for the first time 
in her young life, a powerful drug for the stimulation of 
whatever in adventurous youth has been wounded by dis- 
appointment and youth's hot despair — gambling. The 
gambling took root quickly in this girl who hated wine 



124 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

and had desired so much of life. It was large in '75; 
in '76 it was to be ruinous to her watched and doled 
allowance. 

Meanwhile the tailors and the milliners and all the ruck 
of parasites were taking advantage of the new reign to play 
extravagant experiments in fashion, to build fantastic 
head-dresses, and to load humanity with comic feathers. 
She did not create such novelties, but she was willing to 
follow them. 

The young bloods, in one of those recurrent fits of Anglo- 
mania to which the wealthy among the French are sub- 
ject, must introduce horse -racing. She passionately 
approved. It gave her gambling the familiarity or lack of 
restraint which she was determined to breathe for the 
solution of her ills; it gave her the feeling of crowds about 
her, of pulse and of the flesh. 

Young Artois, the youngest of the King's brothers, 
because he was the most vivacious of those nearest her, 
must be her constant companion. Mercy noted his 
"shocking familiarity"; he feared that scandals would arise. 
They did. 

Again, as the new reign advanced, her unpolitical and 
most unwise concern for personalities showed more vividly 
than ever. Because the ambassador in London was in her 
set she must take up his cause with a sort of fury, when 
he was accused of abusing his position for the purpose of 
commerce. He was acquitted, but, much more than the 
trial or any of its incidents, the open and passionate atti- 
tude of the Queen struck the society of the time. So in 
the very moment of the coronation she again openly received 
Choiseul, though she knew that he could never return 
to Court, that her mother and all Austria disapproved. 



THE THREE YEARS 125 

Much worse than all of these, the constant jar upon her 
nerves broke down a certain decent reticence, the barrier of 
silence which should, always in a woman of her age, and 
doubly in a woman of her position, be absolutely immov- 
able. She publicly ridiculed the painful infirmity of the 
King. Her sneers at his incapacity were repeated; they 
crept into malicious, unprinted songs ; she permitted herself 
similar confidences, or rather publicities, in her correspond- 
ence; she wrote them with her own hand, and there is 
little doubt that others besides those to whom they were 
addressed saw that writing. He, poor man, w^ent on pain- 
fully wuth his duty, hour by hour in his councils, consider- 
ing the realm, distantly fond of her, but necessarily feeling 
in her presence that mixture of timidity, generosity, and 
shame, the secret of which was no longer private to his 
wife and him, but, through her lack of elementary disci- 
pline, spreading grotesquely abroad in exaggerated and 
false rumour to the world. 

So much had been accomplished by her own character 
and destiny when a full year had passed after the old King's 
death. She had made the Crown a subject of jest, her 
character suspect, her husband, that is, the foundation of 
her own title, ridiculous, when the date had arrived in the 
summer of '75 for the solemn coronation of Louis at 
Rheims. 

Mercy, with an inspiration sharper than that which 
diplomats commonly enjoy, had suggested her coronation 
side by side with that of the King. Such a ceremony 
might have retrieved much. Precedent was against it, 
but after so very long an interval ^precedent was weak; 
at best it could but have afforded a spiteful and small 
handle for the enmities which Marie Antoinette had 



126 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

already aroused. She had but to insist, or rather only to 
understand, and her fate would have halted. She was 
indifferent. The miraculous moment when high ceremonial 
and the subtle effect of historic time combined to impress 
and to transform the French nation, the moment of the 
unction of the King, found her nothing more than the chief 
spectator in the gallery of the Cathedral transept looking 
down upon all that crowd of peers and officers whose 
position in the ceremony was exactly fixed. 

She had come in to Rheims the night before under a 
brilliant moon, driving in her carriage as might any private 
lady. The "chic" of such an entry pleased her. She had 
allowed the King to precede her by some days — and 
whatever magic attached to the ritual descended upon him 
alone, and left her unsupported for the future. Her let- 
ter to her mother, written upon the morrow of the occa- 
sion, shows how little she knew what she had missed. The 
Court returned to Versailles, the careless vigour of her life 
was renewed, the thread of her exaggerated friendships 
and her exaggerated repulsions was caught up again. 

When her young sister-in-law was married a few weeks 
later to the heir of Piedmont and Savoy, she did not con- 
ceal her relief at the departure from court of this child with 
whom, for some reason or another, she could not hit it off. 
When Madame de Dillon, with her Irish beauty, passed 
through the Court, that lady moved Marie Antoinette to yet 
another violent friendship — luckily of short duration. As 
for the Princesse de Lamballe, she had already revived for 
her the post of Superintendante of the Queen's Household 
(a post that had not existed for thirty years), and later 
she insisted upon there being attached to it the salary 
(which France imagined enormous) of £6,000 a year. 



THE THREE YEARS 127 

It is of great interest to note that public dissipation or 
abandon of this kind, glowing familiarities, long-lit and 
brilliant nights, an ardent pursuit of what had become 
to her a very necessity of change — all, in a word, that was 
beginning to fix her subjects' eyes upon her doubtfully 
and not a little to offend the mass of the nobility around 
her, all that was found in her insufficient to the niceties 
and balance of the French temper, was easily excused by 
foreign opinion. Just that something which separates the 
French from their neighbours was lacking to the foreign 
observance of this foreign woman. Her carriage, which to 
the French was a trifle theatrical, seemed to foreigners 
queenly ; her lively temper, which the French had begun to 
find forward, was for the foreigner an added charm. 

There is no need to recall the rhetoric of Burke, for 
Burke was not by birth or training competent to judge; 
but Horace Walpole, who was present that very summer 
at the Court of Versailles, and saw the Queen in all her 
young active presence at her sister-in-law's wedding-feast, 
writes with something of sincerity, and, what is more, with 
something for once of heart in his words. He thinks there 
never was so gracious or so lovely a being. 

One judgment I, at least, would rather have recovered 
than any of theirs. It has not been communicated. I 
mean that of Doctor Johnson. For Doctor Johnson some 
months later stood by the side of his young girl friend, 
behind the balustrade at Fontainebleau, watching curiously 
with his aged and imperfect eyes this young Queen at the 
public ceremony of the Sunday Feast. The old, fat, wheezy 
man, who now seems to us England incarnate, stood there 
in the midst of the public crowd behind the railing, block- 
ing its shuffling way as it defiled before royalty dining, 



128 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

and took in all the scene. The impression upon a man 
of such philosophy must have been very deep. I believe 
we have no record of that impression remaining.^ 

Though Marie Antoinette's carriage and her manner had 
founded of her so beneficent a legend abroad and had 
begun in her new home so much of her future disaster, 
with those who knew her most intimately and who were of 
her own blood, with the Hapsburgs of Vienna, her conduct, 
certainly not queenly, seemed not even tragic. They scolded 
sharply, and the Emperor, her brother, crowned a series of 
violent notes by one so violent that Maria Theresa kept it 
back. To her childlessness (which was for them a fault in 
her) , to her conduct (which her own family who had known 
her as a child exaggerated at such a distance) was added 
the exasperation of remembering that with some elementary 
caution she might have acted as the agent of the allied 
Austrian Court whose daughter she was ; they were angered 
in Vienna to see that, instead of so acting, she wasted her 
position in private spites and private choices. 

In fine, when the Day of the Dead came round and the 
leaves of '75 were falling, she could look back from her 
twentieth birthday to her accession, and the view was one 
of eighteen months of mental chaos wherein one emotion 
rapidly succeeded another, each sought for the purpose of 
distraction and oblivion, and of feeding in some sort of fire- 
work way that appetite for life which Louis could not 
nourish with a steady flame. With the next year further 
elements were to be added to those existing elements of 
dissipation. The foundations of the future, which she had 
already levelled out, were to be strengthened. The public 

1 The life of Doctor Johnson has become an object of such widespread national study that more than one 
reader may be acquainted with his judgment of the scene. If it exists, it should be published to the advantage 
of history. 



THE THREE YEARS 129 

judgment of her was to become more apparent, and the 
legend which at last destroyed her was to take a firmer root. 

The year 1776, for ever famous in the general history of 
the world, was the climax and the turning-point of this 
early exuberance and excess. In its first days, during the 
hard winter which marked the turn of the year, she had 
begun amusements which for the first time permitted her 
to cross the barrier which divides the reproach of one's 
intimates from public scandal. Her play had grown from 
mere extravagant gambling to dangerous indebtedness, and 
she had been bitten by the love of jewels, especially of 
diamonds. In this year, too, the simple and somewhat 
empty friendship which she still slightly bore to Madame 
de Lamballe was finally replaced by more violent caprices ; 
she began to associate with the powerful Guemenees, with 
the gentle but subtle and intriguing Countess of Polignac. 

Her indiscretion rose continually. In February she was 
seen with the Princesse de Lamballe whirling over the snow 
into Paris, without an escort, as a private woman might, 
to the disgust and the hatred of the crowd. 

The exhilaration of the cold — for her who was from 
Vienna — the exhilaration of her twentieth year, her love 
of merry domination over the timid little tall companion, 
whom she so soon was to abandon, drove her from audacity 
to audacity. Her sledges, which had been but a domestic 
scandal at Versailles, dared to reach Sevres, St. Cloud; 
they crossed the river, because the hunting wood of 
Boulogne invited them. Upon one fatal morning she 
traversed that last screen and shot through Paris on her 
shining toy. 

The sledge was daringly, impudently alone. There was 
no guard, no decent covering for royalty, no dignity of 



130 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

pace or even of ornament; its pace was a flash, and its 
high gilding a theatrical decor; mixing with that flash and 
that gilding was the jangling of a hundred little bells. 

The streets were all aghast at such a sight. Sevres and 
the villages round Versailles had stared, bewildered, to 
see a Queen go by in such a fashion; but Paris was too 
great to be merely bewildered, and Paris grew angry, as 
might an individual at a personal insult offered. 

The next month saw her first reckless purchase of gems; 
she pledged her name for £16,000, and acquired in exchange 
of that debt diamonds not only expensive beyond the 
means of her purse, but unworthy of her rank and of the 
traditions of her office. 

To such follies she added her personal interference in 
the matter of Turgot. That bright-eyed, narrow, intelli- 
gent, and most un-Christian man, had missed the problem 
ready to his hands. In time of v/ar, with a good army and 
a soldier behind him, he might have solved it; in a time 
of luxury, misery, and peace he could not. In the very 
days when he was propounding his theories of unfettered 
exchange and of direct taxation for the salvation of the 
Monarchy, the harvest of '75 had failed. In the one ex- 
ceptional moment of famine when interference with trade 
was certainly necessaiy to French markets, his free trade 
doctrine was imposed. A popular hatred rose against 
him, and he was hated not only by the populace, who felt 
the practical effects of his economic idealism, but by the 
rich handful who were still devout and who could not 
tolerate his contempt for the Faith, by the corrupt who 
could not tolerate his economy, and by the vivacious who 
could not tolerate his sobriety. His rapid and funda- 
mental reforms, moreover, were opposed by the Parlement 



THE THREE YEARS 131 

of Paris ^ as by a wall. They refused to register the 
edicts. He had still great influence with the King, though 
hardly with any other effective power in the State, and in 
the month of March the King in a Bed of Justice com- 
pelled the Parlement to register Turgot's decrees and 
give them the force of law. It registered, them; but none 
the less Turgot was doomed. 

Mercy, who saw very clearly that the man must go, but 
who also saw clearly the extreme danger that the Queen 
ran in taking upon herself any part in his going, did all 
that his influence could command to prevent her inter- 
ference. He spent his energy and his considerable persua- 
sion in vain. The one motive force and the only one that 
could persuade her to public action had already stirred 
the Queen; she believed herself to have received a personal 
affront; the Cabinet had recalled a favourite from the 
Embassy of St. James's. The girl was determined upon 
revenge, and because Turgot, as Comptroller-General, 
showed most prominently in the Cabinet, it was upon Tur- 
got that her WTath fell, or rather it was Turgot falling from 
power whom she precipitated by her final influence. Upon 
the 10th of May, Guines, whom the Cabinet had recalled 
from London, was raised to a Duchy in a public note; by 
the 12th, Maurepas had told the Comptroller-General 
that his office was vacant, and Marie Antoinette talked 
wildly of sending him to the Bastille. 

There was at this time in Paris a man called Necker 
with whom history would have little concern had not the 
accident of the Revolution later thrown his undetermined 
features into the limelight. He was a product of Geneva, 

1 It should be made dear, though it is elementary, that the Parlement of Paris, by nature a supreme court of 
law, exercised also the anomalous but traditional function of registrar of royal decrees. Nor was a law a law 
until this body had consented to enroll it or had been overcome by a grave, rare and solemn public ritual of 
the King's called "a Bed of Justice," 



132 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

a money-dealer, therefore, and a Calvinist by birth and 
trade — in no way by individual conviction, for his energies 
had long been directed to the accumulation into his own 
hands of the wealth of others. His reputation as a solid 
business man was therefore high, and he was very rich; of 
moral reputation, as the Catholic French understand the 
term, he had none.^ His dealings with the treasury had 
brought his name forward, and in a few months, under a 
different title, he replaced Turgot at the head of the embar- 
rassed finances of the country! . . . Societies in disso- 
lution do such things. 

His conception of reform was what one might expect from 
such a lineage. He cooked the public accounts, flattered all 
to remain in power, was hopelessly void of any plan, and, 
to meet the crisis, just borrowed: the first of modern stock- 
jobbers to conduct a state, and the model to all others. 
He was destined to become a sort of symbol of liberty . . . 
and therein he is an example to democracy as well as to 
money-changers. 

To the signal folly of precipitating Turgot's fall the 
Queen was content to add further marks o^ excess. As 
though her purchases earlier in the year had not been 
sufficient, she must buy bracelets now worth three years of 
her income — bracelets, the news of which reached Vienna 
— and she must give rein to every conceivable indulgence 
in the passion of gambling. All the world talked of it, 
and all that summer, as the influence of her new friends 
rose and as her careless excitement reached its limit, 
the fever grew. 



1 His vivacious and ugly daughter was to be a catch famous throughout Europe. Years later Fersen — of all 
meni — was suggested to her. Pitt in '85 had a bite at her ill-gotten dowry. Luckily for the girl, she escaped 
him, but she married De StaSl, became famous, wrote her lively and didactic comments on the Revolution, grew 
Uglier still, showed a small black moustache, at last wore a turban and drove Napoleon to despaiv. 



THE THREE YEARS 133 

At Marly, during the summer visit of the Court, later 
in the year at Fontainebleau, she carried on the scandal. 
One autumn night in this last place bankers from 
Paris kept the faro tables open for thirty-six hours; they 
were the hours before her birthday, and the Mass of All 
Saints was held before a Court, pale and crumpled with 
the lack of sleep. The morrow, her twenty-first birthday, 
was sour with the memory of the reproach against that 
debauch. The Court returned for the winter to Ver- 
sailles, and Maria Theresa determined that it was time 
for the Queen's brother, the Emperor Joseph, to make the 
journey he had long promised, and to stem these rapids 
which threatened to become a cataract in which every- 
thing might be swept away. Her scolding letters to her 
daughter were accompanied by active plans for the jour- 
ney of her son. She expected, and not without reason, 
that that son's advent would change all, for she knew that 
he would have the direct mission to persuade Louis to an 
operation, to relieve the imperfect marriage of the burden 
that pressed upon it, and to remove from the life of that 
young wife the intolerable nervous oppression whence all 
this increasing violence proceeded. 

It is to the Emperor's journey, therefore, that all one's 
attention should be directed as one reads her life from the 
closing days of 1776 to his appearance in Paris, after 
repeated delays, in the spring of the following year. 

Meanwhile that other spirit whose action was to come 
in upon her life, America, was born. The week that had 
seen Turgot's dismissal had seen passed in Philadelphia 
the Pennsylvania Resolution of Separation from the Eng- 
lish Crown, and in the keener intellectual life of Virginia it 
had seen produced upon the same day the first statement 



134 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

of those general principles which the Colonies had 
drawn from Rousseau, and upon which were to be based, 
for whatever good or evil fortunes still attended it, the 
democracy of our time. The revolt grew from those skir- 
mishes of '75 that had begun the civil war, to the Sepa- 
ratist decisions of '76, the strain upon England's tenure 
of her empire increased, and Vergennes all the while watched 
closely, hoping from that embarrassment to find at one 
moment or another the opportunity for relieving his coun- 
try from the permanent threat of an English war. ; 

It was a difficult and a perilous game. A British suc- 
cess might be, or rather would be, followed by swift venge- 
ance against the embarrassed and fettered Crown of 
France. The Cabinet of Versailles would need allies 
against what was believed to be an all-powerful navy and 
for eighteen months Vergennes was working to obtain these 
allies, in spite of the terror which the British fleet inspired. 
This policy, whose ultimate results were to be so consid- 
erable and so unexpected, took a new shape upon a cer- 
tain day which should perhaps be more memorable in 
the history of the United States than any other. I mean 
the 28th of November of this year 1776. 

Early that morning, the weather being clear and the wind 
southerly, a pilot from the rocks of Belle Isle had made 
out three ships in the offing, but they were hull down; 
later, he saw one bearing a strange, quite unknown flag. 
^He sailed towards it. The colours were those of the new 
Republic, and the stars and stripes flew above a sloop of 
war that carried Franklin; she had with her two English 
prizes for companions. Franklin landed. Within three 
weeks he was in Paris, and by the first week of the New 
Year he was at Passy in the suburbs, the guest of Chaumont, 



THE THREE YEARS 135 

from whose great house and wide park proceeded the care- 
ful intrigue by which the Thirteen States were finally estab- 
lished in their Independence. 

All who can pretend to history have respect for Ver- 
gennes, but that respect is far heightened by the close read- 
ing of what followed. 

Alone of the European States Great Britain could not 
be balanced but could balance. Great Britain was secure 
among them and their insecurity. Great Britain alone in 
her growing monopoly of industry and in her impregnable 
self-suflSciency, economic and military, could not be pinned 
down into a diplomatic system; she alone could afford to 
scorn alliance, and could in a moment change from friend 
to foe and strike at any exposed and vulnerable part of the 
European group — especially at a maritime neighbour. 
The British army maintained a proved excellence of a 
hundred years; it was particularly famous for its endur- 
ance; its records of capitulation were rarer than those of 
any other ; it could afford to be small ; its infantry stood fire 
brutally and could charge after losses that would have 
been fatal to its rivals; it had for framework the squires 
and the yeomen of solid countrysides, for material the still 
manly remains of a peasantry in the English shires, the 
Highlands, whose native language, diet, and race were 
at that time corrupted by nothing more alien than a little 
garrison. Finally, there was then available to the full for 
purposes of war the vigour of an as yet unruined and not 
yet wholly alienated Irish. 

A navy, adequate in numbers, but no drain upon the 
productive power of the nation, gave mobility to this 
force, the soil of these Islands fed the people upon it, and 
meanwhile an industry, textile and metallic, such as no 



136 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

J 
other country dreamed of, supplied an increasing and 

overflowing resource for war. It is but a hundred and 
thirty years since things were thus. A vast change has 
passed, and it is difficult for the modern student, per- 
plexed and anxious for the future of his country, to enter 
into the international policy of his fathers; yet must he 
grasp it if he is to understand what a revolution was effected 
by the issue of the American War; for it is probable that 
when the first complete survey of modern Europe is taken, 
the separation of the American colonies will estab- 
lish a fixed date which marks not only the division between 
the monarchical and the beaurocratic, the old and the new 
Europe, but also, in our province, the division between 
what had been England and what later came to be called 
"the Empire" — with the destinies befitting such a title, 
and the colonies to which it is attached. 

Vergennes saw that this England, free upon the flank 
of his embarrassed country, was now suddenly engaged in 
the most entangling of nets, an unpopular and distant 
civil war. He knew that with a Protestant population of 
her own blood (at that time the States were in -philosophy 
wholly Protestant, in tradition entirely English) would only 
be attacked by the governing families with the utmost 
reluctance. There was no fear of extreme rigours, or of 
sharp, cruel, and decisive depression; there was sympathy 
and relationship on both sides. Therefore the war would 
drag. 

Vergennes had seen, two years before, the little English 
garrison permitting the inhabitants to arm and drill without 
interference; he knew that opinion in England was divided 
upon the rebellion. His whole attention was concentrated 
upon the prolongation of that struggle and upon postpon- 



THE THREE YEARS 137 

ing, to the last, the intervention of France. His attention, 
so given, was successful, and he secured his object. 

At first and for as long as might be he would support, 
unseen, the weaker of the combatants. He received Frank- 
lin, though privately; he refused ships or a declaration 
of war. Arms and ammunition he liberally supplied — 
but he did so through a private and civilian person, whom 
he vigorously denounced in public, who had to go through 
the form of payment from the United States, as might any 
other dealer, and who was very nearly compelled to go 
through the form of receiving heavy punishment as well. 
The private firm so chosen was '' Roderigo Hortalez et Cie"; 
the modern cheat of anonymity in commerce had begun, 
and Roderigo Hortalez was, in reality, that same shifty, 
witty, courageous, and unsatisfied man who had already 
played upon Versailles and Vienna and whose pen was later 
to deliver so deep a thrust at the Monarchy. Caron, or, to 
call him by the title of nobility he had purchased, "De 
Beaumarchais." 



While Vergennes was acting thus, every effort was being 
made at Vienna to advance the journey of the Emperor: 
postponed from January to February, from February to 
March, that journey was at last undertaken, and with the 
first days of April, 1777, Joseph was present upon French 
soil, and driving down the Brussels road towards Paris. 

But all that while, in spite of his advent, the rush of the 
Court had increased, and to the twenty other fashions and 
excitements of the moment one more had been added — 
enlistment for America. The youngster, who was typical 
of all that wealthy youth, not yet sobered or falsified by 



138 ' MARIE ANTOINETTE 

fame, La Fayette, was determined to go; and almost as a 
pastime, though it was a generous and an enthusiastic one, 
the American Revolution was the theme of the Court in 
general. It became the theme of the Polignac clique in 
particular, a theme sometimes rivalling the high interest 
of the cards or lending an added splendour to fantastic 
head-dress and to incongruous jewels. 

And the Queen meanwhile, quite lost, pushed the pace 
of all the throng about her, despairing of any remedy to that 
evil which her brother was posting to reform. 

If Fersen had been there! 



Upon Friday evening, the 18th of April, the Emperor 
Joseph drove past the barrier of St. Denis and entered 
Paris. It was already dark, but the stoic was in time 
for dinner. He was in strict incognito, that he might 
be the more admired, and had given out the arrival of 
"Count Falkenstein" to all the world. He slept in" the 
humblest way at his Embassy ; he had hired two plain rooms 
in Versailles by letter — at a hotel called *'the Hotel of the 
Just,'* presumably Huguenot; next day he paraded as The 
Early Riser and was off to Versailles before the gentry 
were out of bed: the whole thing was as theatrical as could 
be. He wished to meet his sister alone — but he let every- 
body know it. He came up to her room by a private stair 
— and spoke of it as an act of simplicity and virtue. The 
man was of the kind to whom — most unhappily for them 
and their founder — Marcus Aurelius provides a model. 
His certitudes were in words or negations; his pride in 
things facile and dry; his judgments vapid, determined, 
superficial and false — in a manner Prussian without the 




THE EMPEROR JOSEPH II. 

From the tapestry portrait woven for Marie Antoinette 
and recently restored to Versailles 



THE THREE YEARS 139 

Prussian minuteness. In a manner French, but with 
none of the French clear depth and breadth. Of hearty 
vjv^rmany he had nothing; and among all the instruments 
of action designed in Gaul he could choose out only one, 
the trick of sharp command, which the accident of despotic 
power permitted him to use over a hodge-podge of cities 
and tongues. 

The task before him, which was the re-establishment at 
Versailles of the interests of Austria, comprised two parts: 
first, he must counsel or compel the Queen — who stood for 
Austria at Versailles — to such conduct and dignity as 
would permit her to exercise permanent political power; 
secondly, and much more important, he must force the 
King to that operation from which he so shrank and yet 
by which alone the succession of the Crown through 
Marie Antoinette could be assured. 

For the first of these tasks, the reform of his sister*s con- 
duct, Joseph's empty character, without humour and with- 
out religion, was wholly insufficient — nay, it provoked the 
opposite of its intention. The obvious truth of his harsh 
criticism moved the Queen, but his bad manners, his public 
rebuke, offended her more. His precise (and written!) 
instructions forced upon her one irksome and priggish 
month of affected rigidity ; she did but react with the more 
violence from the absurd restraint. With the second and 
more positive task he was more fortunate. His brutal 
questions, his direct affirmation and counsel, his precise 
instructions, all conveyed in the sergeant-major manner 
which is of such effect upon the doubtful or the lethargic, 
accomplished their end. Louis inclined to the side which 
had for now three years urged medical interference ; he sub- 
mitted to an operation, and the principal question at issue 



140 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

for two great States was in this secret manner accom- 
plished: it was the one success, the only one, of Joseph's 
tactless and unwise career. It was of the highest conse- 
.quence to him and his house, and all Europe; for, his 
counsels once obeyed, the maternity of Marie Antoinette 
was ultimately sure. When the Queen should have borne 
a child there could but follow the rage of disappointed 
successors, a secure and increasing influence upon her part 
over her husband, through this the antagonism of the 
monarchy of the nation, and at last the Revolution and 
all its wars. I 

The reader may inquire the precise date of so momen- 
tous a detail. It is impossible to fix it until (if it still exist) 
the document once in the hands of Lassone be published; 
but we can fix limits within which the operation must have 
taken place. It must have been within that summer of 1777, 
in one of three months, June, July, or August ; probably 
in late August or the beginning of September It was cer- 
tainly later than the 14th of May, when, according to Mercy, 
the private interviews upon the matter between Joseph and 
Louis were still unfinished. Marie Antoinette's letter of 
June 16th makes it probably later than that date. A 
phrase of Maria Theresa's on the 31st of July, refer- 
ring to news of the 15th (the last news from Mercy), 
makes it possible that she thought all accomplished 
by the 15th of July. A phrase of Mercy's on the 15th 
of August makes it more probable still. By the 10th 
of September a phrase used by Marie Antoinette in her 
correspondence with Maria Theresa makes it certain.^ I 

Compared with this capital consequence of his journey 
the rest of Joseph's actions, opinions, and posings in France 

1 See Appendix A. 



THE THREE YEARS 141 

are indeed of slight importance. His affectation of retire- 
ment and simplicity, his common cabs, his perpetual appear- 
ance in public and as perpetual pretence of complaint at 
his popularity are the tedious trappings of such men. In 
some things he was real enough ; in his acute annoyance with 
the Queen's set, for instance — especially with Madame de 
Guemenee, and her late hours, high play and familiar, 
disrespectful tones. He was sincere, too, in his astounding 
superficiality of judgment; he was keen on science, eager 
for the Academies, and in that scientific world of Paris 
which boasted Lavoisier and the immortal Lamark, dis- 
covered that "when one looks close, nothing profound or 
useful is being done." 

At the end of May he left for a tour in the French prov- 
inces. His ineptitudes continue. He has left notes of 
his opinions for us to enjoy. He judges the army, and 
condemns it — all except the pipe-clay and white facings 
of the Artois Regiment. That pleased him. He saw 
nothing of the cannon which were to break Austria and 
capture a woman of his house for Napoleon. He judges 
the navy after a minute attention, and finds it — on the eve 
of the American War! — thoroughly bad. One thing he 
does note clearly, that Provence, the King's brother, has 
been going through France in state, as though sure of the 
succession. After what had passed at Versailles, such 
expectations on the part of Louis XVI.'s brother must have 
bred in Joseph a mixture of anxiety and amusement. 

He returned to Vienna, and began to address himself 
to his next failure in policy and judgment — he coveted 
Bavaria. The death of the Elector of Bavaria would raise 
the issue of his succession. That death was approaching, 
and Joseph began to intrigue through Mercy, through his 



142 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

[mother, and as best he could through his sister, for the 
succession to the Duchy and for the support of France 
against Prussia in his outworn, out-dated ambition. While 
Jie still played with such toys, much larger forces were ready 
to enter the scene, and changes that would make the little 
balances of German States forgotten; for as that summer 
of 1777 heightened, dry, intensely hot, and as all the air of 
the life around Versailles was cleared by the new intimate 
relations of the Queen and her husband; as the chief domes- 
tic problem of the reign was resolved, as it became increas- 
ingly certain that the royal marriage would soon be a true 
jmarriage and the way to the succession secure, there had 
come also the certitude of war with England in the matter 
of the American colonies. 

It is upon this latter certitude that attention must now 
be fixed, before one can turn to the tardy accomplishment 
of the Queen's hopes for an heir. The foreign policy of 
that moment is essential to a comprehension of her fate, 
for upon the unexpected turn of that unexpected conflict with 
Great Britain was to depend the fatal respite which des- 
tiny granted to the French Monarchy: a respite of years, 
during whose short progress the financial tangle became 
hopeless, the Queen's ill-repute fixed, and the Crown's last 
cover of ceremony destroyed. 

I say there had come a certitude of war with England. 

Of three things one: either England would reduce the 
tebels ; or, having failed so to reduce them, she would com- 
promise with them for the maintenance of at least a nom- 
inal sovereignty; [or, she would wholly fail and would be 
compelled wholly to retire. In the first case it must be 
her immediate business to attack the French Government 
whose secret aid had alone made the prolongation of rebel- 



THE THREE YEARS 143 

lion possible; in the second case, with still more security, 
and a still more confident power, she could attack an enemy 
which, because it had not dared openly to help her foes, had 
earned their contempt and lost its own self-confidence. 
In the third case she would find herself free from all em- 
barrassment and at liberty to destroy a rival marine, whose 
inferiority was incontestable but whose presence had been 
sufficient to embarrass her complete control of the North 
Atlantic, and to sustain — however disingenuously — her 
rebellious subjects. 

In any one of these three issues a war with England 
must come. But these three issues had not an equal chance 
of achievement. A complete victory of the British troops, 
probable as it was, could hardly result in a permanent 
military occupation of a vast district, English in blood and 
speaking the English tongue. A complete defeat of British 
regulars at the hands of the varied and uncertain minority 
of colonists, and the acknowledgment of American inde- 
pendence by a Britain unembarrassed in Europe, was 
an absurdity conceivable only to such enthusiastic boys 
as was then the young La Fayette, to such wholly un- 
practical minds as that of Turgot, or to popular journalists 
of the type which then, as to-day, are uninstructed whether 
in historical or in military affairs. 

The middle issue was so much the more probable as to 
appear a calculable thing: the troops of George III. would 
determine the campaign, but the settlement following the 
expensive success of the British army would be a com- 
promise whereby the colonies should be free to administer 
their own affairs, should be bound in some loose way 
to Great Britain, and should stand benevolently neutral 
towards, if not in part supporters of, her position in Europe. 



144 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

The formula which guides a commercial State such as 
Britain in its colonial wars has long been familiar to its 
rivals; it is as simple as it is wise. Though we give it 
the epithet of "generous" and speak of the *' granting 
of self-government," while enemies will call it, with equal 
inaccuracy, "a capitulation" followed by "an alliance," 
the nature and purpose of such compromises are those of a 
fixed policy and one upon whose unalterable data the 
British Empire has been built up. 

It was in the nature of things that the British Govern- 
ment in this summer of '77 should first seek to master the 
Americans in the field, next compromise with the defeated 
colonials, set them up as a nation nominally dependent, 
really allied, and so find itself free in Europe for the great 
duel with France. At Versailles Vergennes prepared not 
attack but resistance, and pulled with an accurate propor- 
tion of effort all the strings that should delay Great Britain, 
on the one hand, and, on the other, unite into one body of 
resistance against her the Atlantic seaboard of Europe and 
the principal navies of the continent — that is, the Powers 
of France and the Peninsula ; the admiralties of Versailles, 
Lisbon and Madrid. 

As the Emperor Joseph's carriage rolled westward 
along the main road of Brittany, approaching the gates of 
Brest, Vergennes was signing for despatch to the Spanish 
Court that note of his which inaugurated the active part of 
his plan of defence against England. Precisely a week 
later, Burgoyne and his forces started southward from 
Canada upon what should have been the decisive march 
of the British campaign in America. 

A consideration of the map will at once convince the 
reader, first that Great Britain was in a position suitable 



THE THREE YEARS 145 

to immediate victory, and, secondly, that the military 
advisers of her government had formed the best possible 
plan for its rapid accomplishment. 

\Vliat was the military object of the war? The control 
of a seaboard : a seaboard stretching indeed through fifteen 
degrees of latitude, and extending in its contour over far 
more than fifteen hundred miles, but a seaboard only. 
Behind it lay districts which for military purposes did not 
exist — untouched, trackless, resourceless. The life of the 
colonies, especially their life during the strain of a war, 
flowed through the ports. 

Again, this band of territory ran from a long southern 
extremity, whose climate was unsuited to active work by 
Europeans, through a middle temperate interval to another 
extremity of winter fogs and rigorous winter cold. A 
continental climate rendered the contrast of North and 
South less noticeable, for the warm continental summer 
embraced it all, and the cold continental winter penetrated 
far south; but that contrast between the two halves of 
that seaboard was sufficient to afford a line of social and 
political cleavage already apparent in the eighteenth cen- 
tury and destined in the nineteenth to occasion a great 
domestic war. 

Again, there lay behind this seaboard, at a distance no- 
where greater than three hundred miles nor anywhere 
much less than two, that valley of the St. Lawrence which 
Great Britain firmly held ; her tenure was secure in the diver- 
sity of its race, religion and language from those of the 
rebels and in the unity which the admirable communications 
of its great waterway confirmed. 

Here then was a line already wholly held, the St. Law- 
rence, and parallel to it a line already partially held, and 



146 . MARIE ANTOINETTE 

always at the mercy of the British fleet — the ports of the 
seacoast. Up and down the belt of land between those 
parallel lines went the scattered bands of the rebels. Even 
their organised armies were loosely co-ordinated in action 
and expanded or diminished with a season. 

The obvious strategy for the British was to cut that inter- 
vening belt in a permanent fashion by establishing a line 
from the St. Lawrence to the sea, and so to separate for 
good the forces of their opponents and then to deal with 
them in detail and at leisure. 

An accident of topography afforded to this simple prob- 
lem an obvious key: just down that dividing line, which 
separates the nothern climate and the Puritan type of 
colony from the rest, a sheaf of natural ways leads from 
the coast to the valley of the St. Lawrence, and of these 
the plainest and by far the best is the continuous and 
direct depression afforded by the long, straight valley of 
the Hudson and continued in one easy line along the 
depression marked by Lakes George and Champlain. 
There is not upon all that march one transverse crest 
of land to be defended nor one position capable of 
natural defence, and in its whole extent water carriage is 
available to an army save upon the very narrow watershed 
where (according to the amount and weight of supplies) 
two — or at most three — days must be devoted to a land 
portage. But even here, between the foot of Lake George 
and the Upper Hudson, existed then what is rare even to-day 
in the New World, a road passable to guns. 

Under such conditions, even had the rebellion been 
universal and homogeneous, the strategy imposed was 
evident. The sea was England's; the English forces had 
but to land in force, to occupy one or more of the ports at 



THE THREE YEARS 147 

the outlet of these ways leading to the valley of the St. 
Lawrence, and simultaneously to march down from that 
valley to the sea. They would thus cut the rebellion in 
half; the cut so made could easily be permanently held, 
and the English henceforth could operate at their choice 
and in increasing numbers from any point of the coast 
against either section of a divided enemy. 

I say this was the obvious plan even had the rebellion 
been homogeneous or universal ; but it was neither — 
and nowhere was it weaker or more divided against itself 
than on this very line of cleavage. It was precisely in the 
valley of the Hudson and at its mouth that the British could 
count upon the greatest hesitation on the part of their 
opponents and of most support, sometimes ardent support, 
on the part of their friends. New York was thoroughly 
in the Royal power and the plan of marching from the St. 
Lawrence down to that harbour seemed certain to conclude 
the campaign. Leaving such garrison as New York 
required, Howe sailed with 20,000 men in this opening of 
the summer of 1777 to attack some one of the harbours; 
after a cruise of some hesitation he sailed up the Delaware 
and landed to march on the source of supply, Philadelphia. 
At the same moment Burgoyne set out upon his march from 
the St. Lawrence valley to the sea. 

Each was easily successful. Washington, covering Phila- 
delphia from a position along the Brandywine, was com- 
pletely defeated. Philadelphia was in British Viands before 
the close of September ; an attempt at relief was crushed in 
the suburbs within a week. As for Burgoyne, his force, 
though it amounted to less than a division, was equally 
at ease. He swept easily down Lake Champlain: the 
American irregulars abandoned the isthmus and their 



148 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

positions near Ticonderoga, which were mihtarily iden- 
tical with that pass. He pursued the enemy to the extrem- 
ity of the water, and on southward up the valley, towards 
the watershed; defeating every rally and confident of 
immediate success. 

It was but early in July, and he had already accomplished 
half his route, and could boast the capture of over a hun- 
dred cannon — mainly of French casting. 

All had gone well. The news reaching London, reached 
Paris and Madrid by the mouths of English Ministers and 
Envoys, whose tone was now of an increasing firmness, 
and who, in the immediate prospect of success, began to ask 
in plain terms how matters stood between France and 
Spain, and whether these two Bourbon crowns were pre- 
pared for open war. 

Vergennes was in an agony of writing, of secrecy and of 
defence, urging Spain to draw secretly close to France that 
both might stand ready for the inevitable blow which 
England would deliver when the colonies were once sub- 
dued. 

What followed was Burgoyne's woodland march of a 
few miles across the portage from the lakes to the Hudson. 

The cause of that march's amazing delay, and of the 
disaster consequent upon such delay, will never be 
fully explained; because, although not a few acquainted 
with European roads and European discipline and arms 
are also acquainted (as is the present writer) with the 
unmade country traversed by that force, yet there was 
no contemporary who, by a full double experience of 
American and European conditions, could present in his 
account the American advantage in such a country at 
that time, and the corresponding difficulties of European 



THE THREE YEARS 149 

troops. From Fort Anne, where the last American force 
had been scattered, to Fort Edward, where the Hudson 
is reached, is one day's easy walking. It took Burgoyne's 
army twenty-one. I have neither space nor knowledge to 
say why: German slowness (half the army was German), 
the painful construction of causeways, officers (one may 
suppose) drinking in their tents, a vast train, an excess 
of guns, a fancied leisure — all combined to protract the 
delay. The month of July was at an end when the British 
reached the river, and, having reached it, the men were on 
fatigue day after day bringing in the guns and supplies 
that had come by water to the extremity of Lake George. 

In this w^ay August was wasted, and an attempt to raid 
draught cattle a few miles to the south-east at Benning- 
ton in Vermont was, in spite of the active loyalty or treason 
of many colonists, defeated and destroyed — a disaster due 
to the foreign character, the small number employed, and 
the dilatory marching of the troops so detached. It w^as 
mid-September before the army crossed the Hudson to its 
western bank, where a small auxiliary force approaching 
from the Mohawk valley was to have joined it. That 
force failed to effect a junction. All were bewildered, and 
now a heavy rain began to soften the green ways and to 
swallow the wheels of the guns. Burgoyne reached no 
further south than the site of a drawn struggle before the 
mouth of the Mohawk. And already the American irregu- 
lars, on hearing of the British difficulties, had gathered 
and grown in number; they were at last near double the 
invading force, and September was ending. The w^oods 
were full of colour as Burgoyne's little army fell back — 
but a few miles, yet back; an irresolution was upon it, 
because advance was no longer possible, and yet a full 



150 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

retreat would mean the failure of all the large plan of 
England. There was a rally, a success, a failure, and the 
loss of guns. With October they were beneath the heights 
of Saratoga. Certain supplies attempted to reach them 
by crossing the river ; the far bank was found to be held by 
the increasing forces of rebellion. 

It was determined to abandon the effort and to retire — 
at last, but too late. The road to the lakes was blocked; 
more guns were lost; the enemy were gathering and still 
gathering, a random farmer militia whom such an entan- 
glement tempted : they were soon four to one. An attempt 
at relief by the little force down river from New York 
had failed. On the 12th of October, a Sabbath, the 
harassed army reposed. On the 13th a Monday, Burgoyne 
ordered an exact return of forces, forage, and supply; some 
five thousand were to be found, but not four thousand men 
could stand to roll-call armed; not two thousand of these 
were British; perhaps a week's supply remained; of all 
his park thirty-five pieces alone were left to him. He 
called a council, to which every officer above the rank of 
lieutenant was summoned, and that afternoon the pro- 
posals to treat were drawn -up and despatched; by ten. 
Gates, in command of the American force, had sent in 
his reply. Tuesday and Wednesday were taken up in 
the terms of an honourable surrender — not exactly ob- 
served. On Thursday, the 16th, these terms were signed, 
and on that day, that repeated day the 16th of October, 
the keystone of the British plan in North America had 
crumbled, and the strong arch of a wise strategy was ruined. 

It was but a small force that surrendered in those lonely 
hills to a herd of irregulars. The causes of the failure 
were many, tedious, gradual, and therefore obscure; but the 



THE THREE YEARS 151 

effect was solemn and of swelling volume. It roused the 
colonies ; it slowly echoed across the Atlantic ; it changed the 
face of Europe. 

The French Court, at the moment of that surrender in 
the woods three thousand miles away, sat at Fontainebleau, 
decided for pleasure. 

Goltz, watching all things there for the King of Prussia, 
his master, wrote (on that very day) that the French had 
let their moment slip : England was now secure, he thought 
— for one of the great weaknesses of Prussia is that, like 
self-made men, she has no instinct for fate. i 

Florida Blanco (upon the very day that Burgoyne's 
troops piled arms) was writing from Madrid to Vergennes 
that "the two courts" (of France and Spain) "should do 
all to avoid cause of complaint on the part of Great Britain 
at such a time." 

Vergennes himself, gloomily alone amid the foolish 
noise of Fontainebleau, in the sweat of late hours and gam- 
ing, thus abandoned by Spain and seeing his hopes of the 
Spanish alliance going down, wrote (on that same 16th of 
October, the day that Burgoyne's troops piled arms !) : 
"The Ministers of England think her the mistress of 
the world. . . . My patience has been hard tried 
. . . true, the two (Bourbon) crowns must go warily. 
. . . I hope the constraint may end, but I have no wish 
for war. ... I only ask that England shall not com- 
pel us to do what she dares not do herself, that is, to 
treat these Americans as pirates and outlaws." 

In such a mood of despondence and of anxiety the French 
Foreign Office awaited the first blow England might choose 
to deliver; in such a mood of reluctance and fear Spain 
refused to declare herself on the side of the French should 



152 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

England choose to strike; and in such a tension Western 
Europe stood for one week, another, and a third, when, 
early in November, came the first rumours of the truth. 
How they came it is impossible to determine. They came 
before known or common methods could have brought them ; 
they came before true news, like a shadow or a presage. 
On the 7th of November Vergennes had written to 
Noailles of a hint of some English defeat, "not too much 
to be trusted." On the 15th he was wondering at the 
insistence of the English ministers upon their Pennsylvanian 
successes, at the English silence upon the Hudson march. 
As the month wore on, as the English insistence grew 
gentler, the English silence more profound, Vergennes 
determined his final policy ; but even as he was drawing up 
his memorandum in favour of recognition to be granted 
to, and of alliance to be concluded with, the United 
States, on the 4th of December, and before this document 
was signed, full news came and all was known. The 
4th of December is a day propitious for arms; it is the 
gunners' festival. 

The issue was not long in doubt. Upon the 5th, the 
story and consequence of Saratoga were drawn up and 
despatched on every side. Upon the 6th, the fateful 
document calling the American delegates to an audience 
with Louis was submitted to that King, and he wrote in 
his little sloping hand at the foot of it that word ^* approuve J" 
which you may still read. 

Upon the 8th, Franklin at Passy drafted, Deane, Lee, 
and he also signed^ their memorable acceptance. The 
days that followed, to the end of '77 and beyond it, were 
occupied in nothing more than the confirmation of this 
revolution in policy, and it was certain that by the 



THE THREE YEARS 153 

New Year the French Crown would support the Rebellion 
in arms. 



Such were the three years in which the seeds of the Queen's 
tragedy were sown : they were sown deep. The stock of her 
disaster was established in a vigorous soil; but during the 
silent period of its growth, before the plant had come to 
its evil maturity, a few deceitful years were still to hide 
from her the sequence of her fate. For the two glories of 
life were upon her, victory and the birth of children. 

In common with all her Court the Queen could now, in 
the hale winter of '77-'78, imagine herself upon the thresh- 
old of a new and fruitful life. Her chief anxiety was now 
dispelled, for she might await securely the advent of an 
heir. Her vivacity and her distractions seemed now as 
harmless as her habit of changing pleasures was now fixed; 
her casual but active excursions into public affairs had 
now in her husband's eyes an excuse or motive they for- 
merly had lacked, and her political interference, though 
utterly without plan, was even destined to achieve for a 
moment a peculiar, if deceptive, success. 

This period of her life ends with a scene which the reader 
may well retain, for it sums up the change; a scene which 
forms the happy conclusion of so much unrest and the 
introduction to a brief, a most uncertain, but — while it 
lasted — an enlarged and a conquering time. 

The new year had come. The winter festivities of 
early '78 were at their height awaiting their end at the 
approaching carnival. It was the 21st of January — a date 
thrice of great moment to the French people — and the 
Queen was holding a ball (characteristically hers) in the 



154 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

palace. There was a fuller life that evening, in the glare 
of a thousand candles, than had yet been known; a more 
continuous and a more vivacious noise of laughter and of 
music. Paris had come more largely than usual ; there were 
many strangers, and the air seemed full of an exultant con- 
ciliation. Upon this joy and movement there fell a sud- 
den silence; it was a silence the Queen well comprehended 
and had expected too, for Provence, coming straight from 
the Council, had entered the room and had given her the 
message she awaited. The message was repeated, whis- 
pered first, then louder and more eager questions and 
replies were everywhere heard; voices rose louder: young 
Artois openly cheered. 

The English ambassador had turned at the unusual 
scene and knew its meaning; he despatched to his Govern- 
ment that night the news that the Independence of the 
United States had been recognised and orders to the French 
navy signed. 

What followed may be briefly told. In somewhat over 
a fortnight the treaty of recognition and of alliance with 
the new Republic was concluded. The approaching affair 
with England began to equal, very soon it wholly sur- 
passed, in interest and peril the petty Bavarian quarrel, 
and though war was not formally declared, French ships 
were in February already attacked by English. In mid- 
March the treaty was notified by the French Ambassador 
in London to the Prime Minister of England; forty-eight 
hours later Lord Stormont at Versailles, had demanded 
and received his papers. A month of preparation passed. 

At last, upon Easter Sunday (the 19th of April in that year) 
two couriers riding crossed each other at the royal gate of 



THE THREE YEARS 155 

Versailles — the one reaching, the other leaving, the palace. 
He that drew rein and was ending his journey bore great 
news: D'Estaing had sailed from Toulon with twenty ships 
of the line, and the campaign was opened. He that set 
spurs and was but just beginning his post bore great news 
also, for he had upon him that letter (it is still preserved) 
in which Marie Antoinette told her mother that now she 
was certainly with child. 



VII 

THE CHILDREN 

EASTER SUNDAY, APRIL 19, 1778, TO MONDAY, OCTOBER 22, 1781 

THE expectation of an heir, the Queen's ascendancy 
over her husband, the promise of adventurous 
war, proceeded with the year. Meanwhile the 
little business of Bavaria somewhat marred the hopes of 
the now renewed and invigorated monarchy. It is a 
business history should make little of; hardly a combat — 
rather a diplomatic rupture soon arranged. It covered 
the year exactly — it was settled with the close of it ; but it 
had its significance in the Queen's life, for her 'political 
action in it confirmed and extended the popular idea that 
Marie Antoinette was treasonable to French interests in the 
department of foreign affairs. 

The most apparent thing of that moment was the new cer- 
titude and strength of the Queen now that she was to be a 
mother. Her love of change became less frivolous, more 
mixed with character; her old passionate friendships, her 
appetite for colour of every kind — in jewels, in fantasies, 
in voices — took on some depth and permanence. Even 
her interference with public affairs was no longer the mere 
whim that had been the bane of Turgot: it had objects; 
those objects were pursued, though they were personal and 
unwise. Unfortunately her mother and Mercy persuaded 
her, just as her strength appeared, not to the aggrandise- 
ment of her husband's throne, but to the mere fending 

156 



THE CHILDREN 157 

off Prussia from Maria Theresa's land in the Bavarian 
quarrel. There arose concerning her action a swarm of 
whispers, voices not yet of moment, though numerous in the 
taverns and clear at Court. 

The Elector of Bavaria had died while Versailles and 
all the Court were in the height of their absorption in the 
American Rebellion; just in that last December which was 
full of the first active approach of Vergennes towards the 
American envoys. The passing of the Electorate to another 
branch of the family, and that branch childless, or rather 
lacking direct legitimate issue, threw the musty anarchy 
of German archives open to the lawyers; they were rum- 
maged and a dust arose. The various fragments out of 
which the old Duchy and the newer Electorate w^ere pieced 
together found claimants everywhere, and the two heads of 
antagonism were necessarily Vienna and Berlin: Berlin, 
which would support the heir to the old Duchy — at a 
price; Vienna, w^hich would protect the reigning Elector 
for the reversion — on doubtful pleas of inheritance — 
to some half of the mosaic over which he ruled. 

There was here no plain conscience of civilised right 
against a northern and blundering atheism such as had 
earlier supported the defence of Maria Theresa against the 
too successful cynicism of Frederick the Great. The 
ambitions of Joseph were the ambitions of a philosopher; 
they were at least as empty and by no means as thorough 
as the soldierly ambitions of his opponent, the King of 
Prussia: the injury was mutual, the contempt of justice 
equal, for Joseph was a pupil of Frederick's in wrong-doing. 
To each, however, the complex little territorial quarrel 
seemed of secular magnitude. Maria Theresa was mad- 
dened with anxiety and wrote, so maddened, despairing 



158 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

appeals to her daughter at Versailles. Mercy moved all 
his persuasion to persuade the intervention of France. 
Vergennes as resolutely refused to be involved. England 
was approaching Austria, to the detriment, it was hoped, 
of the Bourbons, the whole weight of diplomatic thought 
was at work, and Europe was warned and threatened with 
incredible futures as one or the other of the two enemies 
armed for the acquisition of a titular sovereignty over the 
tortuous and overlapping boundaries of a feudal ruin. 
Such were the petty concerns of statesmen and even of 
demagogues in a year when the young men who were to 
fight at Valmy were already boys. The politicians 
wrangled over the Bavarian succession as we to-day wrangle 
over colonial things, imagining them to contain the future 
fate of Europe. 

The Queen at first did little. Mercy complained of her 
detachment. She was occupied in the greater matter of 
her maternity, passing all the time of the first leaves and 
the early summer rains in quietude at Marly; she would 
have no Court about her, and when she wrote to Maria 
Theresa it was perpetually of the child. That seclusion and 
that hope so much attached to her the new affection 
and the new pride of Louis that when at last she spoke 
to him, and spoke with increasing violence, for her family 
and for Vienna, she largely accomplished her aim. She 
did not intend to involve the Foreign Office — Vergennes 
was apparently immovable — but so great was now her 
influence with Louis that by autumn she did obtain a 
tardy intervention, and until she obtained it she showed 
in every way her determination to be heard. The first acts 
of war in July moved her to countermand a feast at Trianon ; 
during August she frequently disturbed the Council by her 




MARIE ANTOINETTE 

From the principal bust at Versailles 



THE CHILDREN 159 

presence. In September she put forward an uncertain 
proposal for mediation. It was refused, and her anger 
added to the difficulties of the French Crown. But she 
did obtain — the forgotten act was to re-arise, enormous, 
at her scaffold — she did obtain a subsidy. Treaty 
demanded it: it had been refused: the whole duty of the 
Bourbon Crown was to watch finance — yet fifteen mil- 
lion went to Austria. The taverns made it a whole con- 
voy of gold; there were songs against the Queen, accus- 
ing her of "paying out French gold." Older and worse 
stories about her were revived. The printed obsceni- 
ties from London and Amsterdam began to flow. 
The set at Court which had called her openly *'the Aus- 
trian" before her accession, and since her accession had in 
secret still so called her, passed on the term to the street, 
and the nickname was common in Paris before the end 
of the year. 

All these things she had forgotten before the winter 
closed upon her, and her hour approached. They were 
indeed little things; seedlings. Much greater was the 
coming of an heir and Fersen's return. 



He had come back late in August. The moment she 
had seen him, with his tall, upstanding gait and serious 
eyes, she came forward and reminded him (and those 
about her) of his old acquaintance — he was a friend. 
The lad was still quite young; here was she now a woman, 
and the effect of four years, changing her so greatly in body 
had less changed him in body ; it had less changed her in 
heart. For as the days fell shorter and autumn lapsed into 
winter, his rare and brief notes betray the growing charm of 



160 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

the woman who perpetually remembered him. All through 
the months of the cold, through the time of her approaching 
childbirth, and through the gaieties of the new year that 
succeeded, he remained. Many noted her visage and her 
tone, once especially when she sang and looked at him 
during her singing. At last he also — when in April he 
left the Court, bitten with the gallant adventure of Amer- 
ica, like so many of his rank — he also had understood. 
She followed him perpetually with her eyes; she followed 
him as he left her rooms again for the last time, and it was 
noted that there were tears in her eyes. A wealthy 
woman rallied Fersen as he left upon his conquest; he 
was now old enough to deny gravely that any woman of 
that Court had deigned to consider him: having so denied 
it he was gone. 

As for the Queen, she wrote or spoke of him in 
public as a young nobleman only, now known and 
worthy of advancement, and since she kept the rest strictly 
in her heart no emphasis here of that which lay at the 
root of her life would give it dignity or value in these pages. 
Yet throughout these pages the name of Fersen should 
be the chief name. 

He was gone for five more years after so brief a sight 
of new things. 



Meanwhile the Court awaited the birth of an heir. 

There was a murmur all around. Monsieur had writ- 
ten frankly enough to the King of Sweden that his hope 
of the succession was gone. The Court was transformed, 
and Marie Antoinette especially was a new power: the 
light calumnies were grown heavy now; the revenge for 



i 



THE CHILDREN 161 

personal touches was becoming a State affair; a weight of 
office was upon her, for she was now to be half the Crown 
and the true wife of a King who governed, and the mother 
of a King after him. 

It was on the 19th of December, in the very early 
hours long before dawn, that her husband was warned: 
in the forenoon her travail began. 

I have said that the French Monarchy was a sacramen- 
tal and therefore a public thing. The last act of its 
public ritual was about to be accomplished; for the last 
time it rose to the mystical duties of its office and dared to 
mix with the nation, not as a person, but as an Institution 
for whom, being immortal, peril was nothing, and, being im- 
personal, decency and comfort nothing. Could it have so 
dared again it would have been saved, but it did not dare. 

The populace demanded admittance to the birth, and 
were admitted in the ancient way. The square room in 
which the Queen lay, upon a low little camp-bed before the 
fire, was crowded in a moment; upon the carved marble of 
the chimney-piece two street arabs were seen climbing. 
The market-women were there, mixed with the ladies of the 
Court, and a great press of the poor from the streets had 
found an entry and were packed also upon the great stairs 
outside. Everything was a-buzz and a-tiptoe, questioning, 
craning for the news; the market-women commiserated 
and complained; the ladies-in-waiting stood silent, each 
estimating the event — the change there would be at 
Court, the strong place the King would now hold, and above 
all, the new power of the mother — the little heir, the boy 
who should dispossess Monsieur, exile Artois perhaps, and 
recapture the heart of the crowds to the Bourbon name. 

For some critical moments there was a silence. 



162 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

Vermond (the tutor's brother), who was her doctor, or 
her midwife, had ordered every crevice to be closed. Even 
the chinks of the window had paper gummed to them. 
In such an air and under such an ordeal the Queen fainted. 
Louis in a passion of sense thrust his arm through a 
pane of glass and let in the winter cold; Vermond lanced 
a vein, and with the bleeding and the fresh draught of air 
the Queen returned to life. They told her that the child 
was a girl. 



There were great crowds at her churching and some 
eagerness. The Latin Quarter was impassable with folk 
as her coach crawled up the hill towards the shrine of Ste. 
Genevieve. The square in front of the Cathedral was 
very full — but they lacked a Dauphin. The King was 
glad enough. When, upon Christmas Eve, the child had 
grasped his finger, he had told his pleasure to all. Her 
name and godparents, her household and her future were 
discussed as solemn things. But in Versailles the air was 
dull with anti-climax; they had depended upon, or braced 
themselves for, or begun their intrigue against, a son of 
France — and none was there. 

The little girl who thus was born alone survived. Her 
brothers perished — the heir in prison; her father and 
her mother both were publicly destroyed. She lived. 
The country house of her old age I well remember, a sol- 
emn and lonely place, small and grey and deep in the 
woods— long empty. It fell into ruins, was sold for 
stone, and a road driven over it; but after nightfall horses 
refused to pass the place, and legends of darkness clung to 
the last blood of the Bourbons. 



THE CHILDREN 163 

It was but the close of January when the Queen returned 
from La Muette and her churching to Versailles and the 
disappointment of Versailles. It was just a year from the 
ball-room scene that had meant war with the English. 
That year had done nothing but maintain the struggle to 
the surprise and encouragement of the French Ministry; 
it had done no more, but even that was much. The naval 
actions had been at the worst indecisive, the English com- 
munications along the rebel coast were now in perpetual 
jeopardy, and would so remain until a French fleet was 
destroyed: none was destroyed. Even an attempt to 
blockade the French in Boston harbour had failed, and in 
November D'Estaing had slipped away from Byron under 
the advantage of a storm. Of all the operations of that 
year perhaps the most momentous to history was the 
chance and inconclusive fight of July in the Atlantic, for 
it gave the Queen occasion to doubt the courage of Chartres 
and to ridicule it: and Chartres, soon to be Orleans, found 
his growing hatred of her fixed forever. 

As for her, she kept her carnival, the carnival of 1779. 
Her less light purpose now earned her reproaches far more 
deep than those which had pursued her first childless years ; 
but in her new hopes she could forget them, and her much 
rarer omissions did not remain in her mind. She did not 
see how solidly the foundations of her fate were being laid 
in the dark, and how every trivial folly was her foe ; no act 
of hers proved great enough to destroy the last effect of 
these trivial follies. 

She went to the Opera-ball on Shrove Tuesday with the 
King — it was a folly (they said) to leave Versailles so 
soon?"" She went without him a week later — it was a folly 
to~go^ alone. That night, her coach breaking down, she 



164 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

must take a public fly — a piece of common sense. She 
spoke of the adventure, and it pleased her hugely, but the 
populace twisted it into I know not what adventures, 
repeated and enlarged in a thousand ways. 

When in April the measles incommoded her, she must 
retire to Trianon for a month — it was common sense ; 
but it was "breaking roof" with the King and therefore 
a lesion in the constant etiquette of the Crown. She took 
with her her young sister-in-law, Madame Elizabeth, 
whom she had once petulantly avoided, and now, saner, 
loved; and Madame de Lamballe was there too. It was 
common sense; but her absence from the Court was hate- 
ful, was an insult to the courtiers, and the presence at the 
Trianon during the day of four gentlemen, her friends, 
was more hateful still. The lies poured out in a printed 
stream from London; and the Paris coffee-shops, and the 
drawing-rooms too, had now woven round her an enduring 
legend of debauchery more real than things witnessed or 
heard. The calumny was fixed. 

If a moment must be chosen of which one can say that 
it was the decisive moment in her public ill-repute, the 
moment before which that repute was yet fluid, the mo- 
ment after which it was set, then that moment must be 
found in this summer of her twenty-fourth year, 1779. 
It was an effect coming well after its cause : the high tide of 
a wave that the first reckless three years had raised. 

It may be asked^whether, had some shock or some neces- 
sity wholly changed her, had she given up every lightness 
as she had already given up most excesses, she might not 
yet have warded off the approaches of a distant judg- 
ment. No, she could not. The character of the attack 
upon her she could have modified ; but she could only have 



THE CHILDREN ' 165 

diminished its volume by increasing its intensity, or its 
rapidity by extending its already almost universal vogue: 
she could not have escaped it. The most sober actions 
of that enthusiastic nature would now for ever be criticised. 
Had no money gone on slight pleasures, the money spent 
in every error of foreign policy would have been put down 
to her; every unpopular dismissal she was to be guilty of, 
innocent or no, and her name was to be, in every story of 
intrigue, however incredible, pre-judged. She was destined, 
henceforward, to be forgotten in victory and remembered 
in defeat, nor could anything have saved her save a sudden 
comprehension of France. No God revealed it to her, and 
to the general protest that was rising beneath her came 
accident after accident, some hardly of her doing, some 
not at all, but every one pointing towards the single issue 
of her fate, not one in aid of her. 

The nights of August were hot and the early autumn 
also. The customary tours of the Court had been coun- 
termanded to save money. The princesses walked at 
evening and mingled with the crowd on the terrace of the 
palace, where was the band. It gave scandal. It gave 
scandal that she should walk later with Artois. It gave 
most scandal that Madame de Polignac, with her refined 
and silent face, her gentle deep-blue eyes under that dark 
hair — a type not national — should so entirely possess 
the Queen. 

The Polignac clique demanded and obtained on every 
side. It was a double evil: a proof to the Court that the 
aristocracy as a whole were excluded from favour and 
that a faction ruled; a proof to the nation that, at 
a time when finance was the known burden, and when, 
in the midst of prosperity, a permanent crisis weighed 



166 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

on the impatient poor and the public forces alike, the 
executive, the King, could blindly spend money and 
endow every Polignac claim. The sums involved in 
this patronage of the Polignacs, as in every other public 
extravagance of the French, were small. The debts of a 
Pitt or a Fox were far larger, the luxury of our modern 
money-dealers are mountainous compared to them; but 
they fell on a nation wholly egalitarian, unused to and 
intolerant of government by the wealthy, and a nation 
which regarded (and regards) its government as the prin- 
cipal engine to use against the rich, not in their aid. 

Trianon, not enormous in its cost, grew to be yet another 
legend, and that legend was not diminished when, in the 
summer of 1780, a little theatre was opened there, a little 
stage for the Queen. 

All the world did such things ! None could blame her — 
yet all did. After all, one great house after another had 
put up its show — most of them more costly than hers : 
but there was in her gradual extension of the amusement 
something that aggrandised it and made it a public talk; 
her invitation to the great Paris companies of actors, her 
very seclusion at first, with its opportunity for rumour, 
later her open doors, swelled the comment and the offence 
of Paris. Paris detested the private theatre from the 
first. There was in it a mixture of carelessness for the 
State and of personal abasement which it could not tolerate 
in a French Queen; yet how simple was the distraction to 
her, and how could the subtleties of these Paris critics, 
themselves the best actors in the world, deriding acting 
and despising it, be comprehensible to her ? She played on. 

The King came often. He applauded. She permitted 
— in this year 1780 at least — no one but the royal family 



THE CHILDREN 167 

to witness her from the audience . . . but the parts were 
many and needed many players. She made dull Campan, 
her librarian, manage for her; she gave no place in the dis- 
traction to those who thought their presence about her to 
be a most solemn right and duty. In the autumn to the 
acting she must add singing, though her voice was not 
always in tune and was often displeasing in its lack of 
volume. Stage parts demanded stage lovers, and hear- 
ing this, Mercy in his turn opposed. He came at her 
invitation (but he insisted on being hidden behind the 
lattice of a box), he applauded her acting somewhat, was 
courtier-like to her singing — but he disapproved. 

Silent, a little bent, low-voiced, a man of but fifty-three 
— though seemingly older — Mercy was now at the height 
of that long career during which for twenty-two years he 
was Austria itself permanently present before Marie 
Antoinnette, a spy over her for her mother's sake and 
for her own, a devoted servant of the Hapsburgs and 
Lorraine. 

His nobility was of the Empire: a Belgian from Liege, 
a man without nationality, and with no comprehension 
of the rising religion of patriotism, he had from his child- 
hood formed part of that cosmopolitan soldiery which was 
the shield of Maria Theresa; he lived for that Great Lady 
who maintained him in his embassy, and in his manner and 
tradition he maintained the character it had had under 
his master, Kaunitz. 

He had passed all his early manhood in that splendid 
riverside house in Paris w^hich the dandyism of the great 
diplomatist his teacher had demanded. His youth — 
reserved, awkward and probably laborious — had left him 
very observant. He had adopted for life all the externals 



168 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

of the Parisians, but — with the narrowness of his profes- 
sion — he had failed to see that inmost part of them 
which was so soon to launch the tempest of wars against 
all that bunch of private interests on which he depended, 
and to destroy it. The French Crown was nothing to him, 
and whether in Paris, at Versailles, or down river in his 
great country house at Conflans, the French nation left him 
careless. He was lord of a French manor in Lorraine, of 
another near his chateau on the river. His wines were 
French, and marvellous, and cellared in 15,000 bottles, 
which the peasants of the Oise drank for him joy- 
fully in '92 — nothing more saddened the old man in his 
exile when the Revolution was on. 

His horses were superb. Even of coachmen he boasted 
two — each beautiful and large ; each equal in domestic 
rank. 

Unmarried, he maintained with dignity an opera-singer 
of some fame and of the refinement customary in that trade; 
at the close of his life he left upon record their "close and 
rooted friendship." 

Such was the man who for nine years had watched his 
princess as she grew to womanhood and at last to mother- 
hood at the French Court, and for nine years had sent 
those long, regular, and careful letters to Maria Theresa 
which are now our source for quite half the history of the 
place and time. His life also was at a crisis and a change in 
this year of 1780, for in the autumn of it his great sovereign 
died. 

Maria Theresa was sixty-three. She was still vigorous 
in body, powerful in voice, alert in brain, but for many years 
a great melancholy had not abandoned her. She had con- 
tinually contemplated her husband's tomb; her letters to 



THE CHILDREN 169 

her children, and especially to the Queen of France, were 
full at the last of an approaching silence. The Bavarian 
trouble had broken her ; in the long expectation of a grandson 
to the French throne she had been disappointed ; the future 
of her daughter had terrified her — for she saw the 
gulf. It was upon the 24th of November that she felt 
her fatal illness; until the 29th she wrote and dic- 
tated her affairs of State, and on that very date wrote at 
length to the Queen. Then she saw Death coming visibly; 
she staggered into a chair, and with words of rational 
charity upon her lips she died. 

It was a week — Wednesday, the 6th of December — 
before the news could reach Versailles. It came at evening. 
Marie Antoinette saw suddenly receding, as the sea had 
receded from Lisbon at her birth, the principal aspect of 
her life. The memory of her mother, and the constant 
letters — scolding, anxious, loving, or imperious — had been 
her only homely thing where everything around her had 
been alien and increasingly alien. Her mother for nine 
years, her mother and Mercy's voice, had been tangible: 
all the rest was strange. That deep inner part which she 
did not or could not show, which she herself perhaps did 
not know, and which appeared but three times upon the 
surface of her life, rose through its eager and not profound 
levels of sense. Her whole frame was broken; she spat 
blood. She put herself that hour in black of every kind 
disordered, and she met the coming year charged with a 
sorrow that could now never wholly leave her. But that 
year was to give her the two chief things of that phase in 
her life — the news of a successful battle and the birth of a 
son; and a third — the woman La Motte, through whom 
the chief of her evils were to come upon her. 



170 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

Far off in Virginia, La Fayette lay at Richmond with a 
handful of men. Cornwallis made a dash for him and 
failed, marched back, burning and plundering, to the coast, 
received a confused tangle of orders, entered Yorktown 
and awaited the English fleet. Washington had heard how 
Grasse in the West Indies would sail with the French fleet; 
he marched southward to join the French commanders. 
With him was young Fersen, who for so long had not seen 
France and who was there volunteered for America: with 
him also was Rochambeau and all his men, and they hurried 
to victory together through the wet, heavy summer of 1781 
along the Atlantic plain. 

Meanwhile in Versailles nothing was toward. The 
Court had lost its old gaiety in the stress of the war and of 
the "economies." The Queen awaited and implored a son. 
The Emperor, coming in July 1781, for the second time 
to a country he despised, "found much improvement," was 
entertained at Trianon, and went away. It was August, 
hot, drowsy, and silent; it was September, and an intense 
anxiety for the birth — now at last, if it might be — of 
an heir. 

And as that September passed, two things came into 
this strange life upon which so many varied things arose 
and joined darkly in their dates; each accident was quite 
unknown to the Queen. 

The first was this, that the British fleet coming up to 
save Cornwallis found Grasse already within the bay, 
was beaten off, and with it the chance of succour; so that 
La Fayette and Washington meeting could and did, 
just as the month ended, lay siege. 

The second was this : that up in the mountains of Alsace, 
a lady, a friend, introduced a younger lady and a poor one 



THE CHILDREN 171 

to the notice of the Bishop of Strasburg. He was that 
coadjutor to the see, now succeeded to it, whom Marie 
Antoinette had seen as a child — the first to meet her in 
France after her crossing of the Rhine. He was now 
the Grand Almoner, and was spending the end of the hot 
season in his palace of Saverne. It was thus that the 
woman La Motte first touched her victim, the Cardinal 
de Rohan. And it so happened that the Cardinal de 
Rohan, who had been the first to greet the Queen on her 
passage of the Rhine as a child, now aspired to be her lover, 
or — as his fatuous misconception of her would have put 
it — "one of her lovers." She for her part had resolutely 
avoided him. He was odious to her. Upon his ambition 
and credulity this woman La Motte was to play. 



It had been upon April 25 that Cornwallis in the 
Carolinas had broken camp and started northward, to 
conquer and to hold the central seaports of the rebels, as 
he had conquered and held Charlestown. On the 20th of 
May his two hundred miles were marched, and he had 
joined the troops in Virginia. 

That march was not followed in Versailles — and even 
had it been followed, nothing would have been thought of its 
progress. The war had lingered so long, the issue had so 
dragged that no chance could be foreseen, and the tangle 
of those wildernesses without roads, hardly with towns, was 
beyond European imagining. They knew that young La 
Fayette was still desolate somewhere there — they knew no 
more. Fersen — if more than his bright image came to 
her, if rumours of his letters home could come to her — 
must have given the woman who remembered him something 



172 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

of his own lassitude: cooped up as was that Swede in 
New England, without supplies, without money, cursing 
the Americans, telling the French Cabinet they were masters 
of folly, saying the Southern States were conquered by the 
British, and complaining with a Northern complaint of the 
indiscipline of the French. But there was greater business 
to engage attention at Versailles; the Queen was again 
with child ; and Necker, failing at the vast financial tangle, 
had fallen. 

Just as Cornwallis and the army in Virginia met to 
complete the war, Necker had been sent back from his 
command of the exchequer to those private and less 
reputable dealings with which the Puritan was more 
familiar and at which he was more successful than in the 
financing of a military nation. The Queen, who had not 
driven him forth at all, who would have had him remain, 
was blamed because she did not save him. The rising 
Democratic opinion of Paris had already vaguely begun to 
favour Necker's ineptitude : he was a foreigner ; he had no 
faith (save the Genevese mask) ; he was novel, he was 
a change — he was therefore demanded, and his dishonesty 
was not comprehended; yet that dishonesty was even 
then about to cost some price to the French State, for 
by his counsel and after his dismissal appeared that 
first sham Exchequer Statement to deceive the nation, 
to cajole it into a loan, to embitter it for the future ; and 
the blame of the trick was to fall on the Crown and not on 
him, its author. 



It was October, 1781: Cornwallis was surrounded in 
Yorktown : the British fleet had failed to relieve him and 




THE COUNTESS OF PROVENCE 
From the bust at Versailles 



THE CHILDREN 173 

the siege advanced; the parallels were opened; they 
were firing at six hundred yards, and Cornwallis still held 
on. The third week, and they were firing at three hundred: 
two redoubts still forbade a nearer approach. On the 
14th, the two redoubts were carried by the French, and 
next day came the storming. 

The river lay near a mile broad behind Yorktown: he 
might yet cross to Gloucester; his guns were dismantled 
and his force shattered, more by sickness than by fire, 
but he made the attempt, and the wind defeated him. Upon 
that ominous Friday, the 19th, he laid down his arms, and 
England had lost the war. By an accident native to linger- 
ing campaigns, a series of chances and one coincidence at 
the end — the entry of the French fleet — had suddenly 
determined the issue: the young boys of the French Court, 
heretofore grumbling and themselves disliked, were sud- 
denly become heroes; the colonists, "half savages," "mostly 
traitors to the English," were suddenly become "the athletes 
of Liberty" ; many in England and all the Rivals of Eng- 
land made up their minds that the business of England 
was at an end. 

It was Fersen, with his command of French and English, 
who had negotiated that surrender. Soon he would return. 

At Versailles that October Friday and the Vv^eek-end 
following it were still. For the few days the Court was 
silent. The issue of the expected childbirth had been 
debated or feared; it was now not mentioned in an 
intensity of expectation. The morning of the Monday 
that silence continued. The King had ordered his Hunt; 



174 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

four of the carriages were already started; when he 
bethought him before he left to see the Queen again. He 
thought her to be in pain, and though she denied the pain, 
he ordered the Hunt to return, and an unusual rumour 
and press at once filled the great galleries. It was a little 
after eleven o'clock when the passages and halls were full 
of a gathering crowd, and the cold and splendid staircase 
which made the royal life at Versailles a public thing, a 
thing of the open air, were already crammed before noon 
by a mob of the populace; but this time custom was dis- 
dained and the doors were shut fast. "Within the Queen 
lay groaning on her pallet-bed before the fireplace, but there 
was air around her: no such press as had all but killed 
her three years before. Yet that exclusion of the populace 
helped to kill the Monarchy. 

At one o'clock a Swedish noble, chancing to be at the 
Queen's door, was told the news. He was caught and electri- 
fied by it as though he had been of the French blood. He 
turned to the first woman he met and said: "We have an 
heir!" Now that woman happened to be Provence's wife, 
and the scene — her red anger and her disdain, his bewilder- 
ment — were taken up at once into the laughter of the 
moment. All the world laughed or cried; it was like 
the excitement of a great victory turning the tide of a dis- 
astrous war. 

The Queen, when she could speak, noting the silence 
round her pallet, and hearing the noise without, said faintly 
and smiling: "I have been a good patient. . . . Tell 
me the truth." They were still silent, and she was sure 
that another daughter had been born, till the King came 
in and said to her: — 

"The Dauphin begs leave to come in." 



VIII 
FIGARO 

MONDAY, OCTOBER 22, 1781, TO APRIL 27, 1784 

THE birth of an heir struck, as it seemed, an epoch 
in the evident transformation of the Monarchy, 
and in the increasing position which Marie Antoi- 
nette occupied upon that scene; not that such a birth was 
either unexpected or unUkely. The Court and the nation 
had known for now three years that the royal family was 
established; it was certain that children would now support 
and surround the throne, and even in the preceding year 
nothing but a natural accident had postponed the hope of 
a prince. But the living presence of the child, the found- 
ing of a secure succession within so short a period from 
the earlier disappointment, had, as have all symbols, an 
effect greater than that which calculable changes could 
expect. 

A wide popular enthusiasm, though later it was extin- 
guished, did for the moment rise spontaneously to the 
encouragement of Government, and that initiative which 
the French had for centuries demanded and still demanded 
from the custodians of their State was, as it were, thrust 
into the hand of Louis. 

Of all qualities in ruling that which this people will least 
forgive is ease: in their delight at the news of a Dauphin, 
France, and particularly Paris, implicitly urged to energy 
if not the good-humoured and slow-thoughted man who 

175 



176 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

was in theory the whole executive, at least the machinery 
of which he was the centre. A new phase of one sort or 
another had certainly begun. 

Sudden causes of change are never unaccompanied by 
coincidence; allied forces invariably converge upon the 
main cause of change and unite for a common effort. Three 
such advancing supports synchronised in these last months 
of 1781 — the new aspect of the Austrian Alliance, the suc' 
cess in America, and the death of old Maurepas, who since 
the accession of Louis XVI., had presided at the Council. 
Each of these accidents was singly powerful; in their com- 
bination they were irresistible; and a moment of oppor- 
tunity to which a man of rapid decision might have given 
the greatest effect, was apparent even to Louis in the close 
of that year. 

The result of Maria Theresa's death, and of Joseph II. 's 
uncontrolled power in Austria had now matured. The 
naif but persistent enmity of the Emperor towards the 
Faith — whose doctrines were in his little vision as bar- 
baric as the Gothic architecture, and whose rapid elimination 
from European culture he took for granted — was, if not 
the mainspring, at least the chief expression of that general 
action whereby he imperilled his house and profoundly 
modified the situation of Austria. His preparation to 
rob and destroy the religious orders, his unconcealed con- 
tempt for the ideal they represented, his similar pretension 
that patriotism was a superstition, his petty but sincere 
conviction that none save material benefits guided by 
moral abstractions were of use to mankind — in a word, his 
despotic atheism — culminated in an "Edict of Toleration," 
which, when allowance is made for a century's development, 
may be compared for its affront against the customs of his 



FIGARO 177 

subjects to that which had cost James II. of England his 
throne. In itself it had no bearing upon France and 
was hardly heard of in that country, but it was a recanta- 
tion of all that Maria Theresa had stood for; it meant 
an open admiration for Frederick of Prussia, his method 
and his principle; it argued a philosophy which would, not 
reluctantly and of necessity, but eagerly and of set purpose, 
overset old traditions and sacred landmarks that had 
attempted the suppression of a national language in Hun- 
gary, and was to suggest time and again as a simple solution 
of political problems, the denial of all that for which men 
have always been prepared to die. 

This act, the precursor and the type of so many others 
of his, was signed in Vienna during that same month of 
October, 1781, which saw the happy delivery of his sister 
at Versailles, and the culmination of the American War 
upon the Chesapeake. Nay, these capital events fell 
within one week. It was upon a Monday that the Edict 
was promulgated, upon the following Monday that the 
Dauphin was born, upon the Friday between that the Eng- 
lish and German garrison in Yorktown laid down its arms. 

The success of the war in America, especially the dram- 
atic finale of Cornwallis's surrender, had an effect upon 
opinion in Paris which, though it was sudden and short, 
was yet very powerful. The French, having of all nations 
by far the most general experience of war, are slow to adven- 
tures of such a kind as their intervention in America: the 
Court had been especially slow; the King perhaps the 
most reluctant of all — in the last peril of death he exclaimed 
against the memory of that campaign. Once engaged, 
therefore, if matters had gone ill (as the French troops in 
America most characteristically swore they would go ill!), 



178 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

or even if a long and indefinite campaign had dragged 
on through succeeding years, so that the full financial 
effect of the struggle could have been felt before its close, 
then the whole weight of blame would have fallen upon 
Versailles. As it was, Yorktown came like the thrust of 
a spur, and the Monarchy, doubtful as was its course, leapt 
forward. 

The death of Maurepas was the last coincidence of these 
three; it was as exactly (synchronousJ)and as full of effect 
as either of its fellow accidents. The capitulation of Lord 
Cornwallis was known in Paris precisely thirty-one 
days after it had taken place. It was upon the 19th of 
November, a Monday, that Louis had the news. The 
Queen had not yet risen from child-bed. Louis was sit- 
ting with her in her room when the Due de Lauzun was 
announced, and gave the message that Yorktown had sur- 
rendered. Upon the Wednesday following, De Maurepas 
was dead. The importance of that passing lay in this, 
that Louis, at such a juncture, now first attempted to be 
free. 

All men are chafed, and that perpetually, by what they 
know of their own defects, and Louis could not forget, 
from his accession onwards, that it was always in him to 
yield to a quicker brain. He thought it shameful in a King. 
He never yielded from weakness, but often from bewil- 
derment. His own decision would come to him after he 
had acted on the decision of another. He understood, 
he desired to act, later than did his advisers: often so late 
that, by the time his will was formed, occasion had passed. 
If, when his slow judgment had matured, he found it dif- 
ferent from that upon which immediate action had been 
taken, he was angered. If that immediate action had 



I 



FIGARO 179 

proved disastrous, he was secretly indignant that his slower 
wit had not prevailed. But, stronger than all these reasons, 
the mere instinct of the imperfect warned him to a distaste 
of guidance. 

He had, however, come to the throne a boy; in years but 
twenty, in experience (save in the excellent art of horse- 
manship) null. He had found ready to hand his old min- 
ister, Maurepas, courteous, active, with a good though a 
too facile judgment; a patriot whose career had been 
ruined by the mistress of Louis XV. (in itself this was a 
recommendation to the young King), and a courtier whom 
his father, the Dauphin, had, upon his deathbed, pointed 
out to be the true counterweight to the irreligion of Choiseul : 
Louis XVI. had accepted such a guide and had upon the 
whole not repented of his choice. For seven years the 
young King had received the counsel of this old man; a 
habit had been formed, and a strong affection with it. But 
as Maurepas approached his end, as the gout forbade him 
his former clearness of thought, and a continual confine- 
ment interfered with his attendance at the Council, the 
maturer judgment of Louis began, though secretly, to 
assert itself. He showed for the depositary of so lengthy 
a Court tradition a filial devotion ; he would come in person, 
and familiarly, to bring news to the old man's room — 
notably the news of the Dauphin's birth was so given, 
domestically and alone. There subsisted between them 
one of those intimate relations which so often arise between 
the permanent official upon the one side, and the respon- 
sible authority upon the other: it became a personal tie, 
and when Maurepas died Louis would renew it with no one. 
After some hesitation the King lit for a first minister upon 
Vergennes, but he would not give to this new officer the 



180 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

official title; he was jealous of a fuller power which he now 
proposed to exercise continuously and with a more direct 
affirmation than in the past. Louis was incapable of the 
task he so attempted, but if ever there was a time in the 
reign when such a task could be attempted, this autumn 
and winter of 1781 was that time. 

Here then was the field: a treasury embarrassed, but 
relieved, in appearance at least, by a frank audit — for the 
cooked accounts Necker had prepared before his dismissal 
bore that aspect and title of a public audit; great and unexr 
pected success in a doubtful foreign war; a monarch 
possessed of a power approaching that of a modern Cabi- 
net, and now ready to experiment with that power; 
abroad, Joseph II., who was the chief element of inter- 
national politics and the national ally of France, had 
entered upon a new direction of the Austrian House. Upon 
such a field was to work the increasing influence of the 
Queen. 

It is true that a certain part of her repute was ^low fixed 
in public opinion: that she was extravagant, that she was 
bound to favourites, that she was foreign. The legend 
had arisen in Paris, and no detail of her action, no appre- 
ciation of complexity could easily alter the simple con- 
clusions of the Parisian populace. But, on the other hand, 
she was the mother of the heir, her position was stable 
while the opinion of the capital was not so, and it did not 
seem impossible that in the long course of years the great 
and dumb national mass should be so indoctrinated in her 
favour, as the growth of her children, an older judgment 
in her, and perhaps a continued peace and a return to 
prosperity, should restore the tradition of the monarchy, 
or rather confirm it in its new characters. 



FIGARO 181 

If the King was now ready to act and to reform the 
State, Marie Antoinette was of far more influence with 
him than ever she had been before. It was hers, if she 
chose, to regulate the new phase of Government. She 
did in part so choose, and she might have succeeded. 
Her habits would, indeed, have continued — her cards, 
her theatre, her gems, her familiarity — but all, as it 
were, tinctured, accepted, taken with the life of the Court 
and little affecting a new-found order. Had the problems 
presented to her been of those that fitted her intuition 
or experience, she might even then have lifted her fate. 
For a year and for more than a year — all 1782 and on 
into 1783 — the solidity of her position was assured; the 
future was apparently prepared. A group of trifling in- 
cidents passed her quite, or almost, unperceived in the 
midst of an established leadership in Europe, of royal visits 
that cemented a general alliance, and of accomplished 
hopes; another year passed, she was presented — her influ- 
ence being then at its height — with the affair of the 
Scheldt, a problem in which the interests of her Austrian 
House clashed with that new patriotism which, least 
of all things French, could she understand. She 
blundered, she necessarily blundered; but as she looked 
around to see what forces were left her, she found not 
only the results of that blunder confronting her, but 
an appalling menace proceeding from a direction wholly 
unconnected with her life — from the business of the 
diamond necklace — and beside it, grown suddenly quite 
loud like an offensive chorus of disdain, the voice 
of a writer whom she had half patronized and wholly 
despised, the neglected voice of Caron — Beaumarchais : by 
the beginning of '84i one of those accidents — the pen of 



182 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

Beaumarchais — had shaken her influence and that of 
all the Monarchy; by the end of '85 the other — the affair 
of the necklace — had destroyed it. 



The year 1782 opened upon the new gladness of the 
Queen; her churching at Notre Dame (now customary) 
was marked, if not by a vivid popular greeting yet by no 
coldness. At the Hotel de Ville in the evening she met an 
official and commercial world that was warmly hers; she 
shared as warmly in the glories of the American news; 
she would have driven home in her own carriage the wife 
of La Fayette to show her enthusiasm for his triumph and 
his return. Her ampler manner, her more contained and 
settled bearing, was consonant with the position she had 
gained; it promised her, in those who saw and approved 
it among the magistracy of the city, a continuance and an 
increase of influence. Back at Versailles she continued 
without scandal, and yet at a fast-rising expenditure, the 
habits which had now become permanently hers: new 
fashions in dress perpetually changing and in head-dress, 
cards to the small hours , and her private theatre at Trianon 
still receiving her upon its stage to the applause now, not of 
a half-dozen or so of the royal family, but of a full audience ; 
many courtiers, many friends of friends, and even the offi- 
cers of the Guard were permitted to see her painted behind 
the foot-lights, to note her true rendering of vivacious parts, 
and to accept when she sang her imperfectly-trained, 
insufficient and somewhat violent voice. Of these regu- 
lar dissipations the last was the most criticised, though 
even that seemed by this time so normal that of itself it 
did not lessen her growing power; but in distant connection 



FIGARO 183 

with her taste for such things there arose, and precisely 
at this critical moment, a discussion which was largely to 
affect her life: it was the discussion upon the "Mariage 
de Figaro." 

The "Mariage de Figaro" was no great thing; it was a 
well-written play from the pen of a man, now advanced in 
middle age, whose diction and care for letters were typical of 
his own time, but whose vices were entirely modern. Born 
in a low position, his darting mind had carried him to a sort 
of fluctuating eminence, especially in wit. He had taught 
music to princesses, married an infatuated widow, adopted 
her name of Beaumarchais, purchased some insignificant 
post and with it a nominal right to the "de" of nobility, 
preserved his health, speculated, probably robbed, certainly 
made and lost considerable sums, traversed and thoroughly 
understood English society, repaid its hospitality by advanc- 
ing the American cause in France, speculated upon the 
commissariat of that campaign, rendered jealous years ago 
the equally cynical Voltaire, and now, at fifty, was getting 
talked of again in the matter of his new play. 

He and it were little things to Marie Antoinette, but the 
rumour of them was considerable, for, a few months before, 
at the end of the past year, the King had heard that this 
"Mariage de Figaro" was not tolerable. It was a satire 
upon all established things. The play was already ordered 
for the Theatre Fran9ais. Louis had it read to him pri- 
vately, and for once made a rapid decision. As literature 
he could not judge its considerable merits; as politics he 
put his foot down : such laughter at such an expense to gov- 
ernment and all tradition were not to be borne — and the 
licence was withdrawn. The public rumour rose and grew. 

Every witty lady about the Court and in the capital, many 



184 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

more who desired a reputation for wit, insisted upon read- 
ing the play; upon hearing it read aloud; upon having 
Beaumarchais come and read it aloud. All the Polignac 
world was mad on it. Lomenie de Brienne boasted that 
he had heard it oftenest. The Princesse de Lamballe moved 
heaven and earth to have it read by the author in her very 
rooms. 

The "Mariage de Figaro" was, therefore, to the Queen 
a perpetual phrase on the lips of the smart, literary and 
unliterary: it is doubtful if she read a line of it, but she 
heard of it and heard of it again. She forgot it for 
the moment; later she remembered it again — not to 
her good. 

Meanwhile a much larger matter vexed her. In the midst 
of her active and interested life, of promotions, personal 
successes and habitual pleasures, the insistence of her 
brother Joseph continually pursued her, and a mixed 
anxiety, an anxiety to be political, an anxiety to escape 
responsibility, came to her almost daily — from Mercy imme- 
diately, ultimately from Vienna: she felt upon her the 
uneasy burden of the Hapsburgs. 

While her mother still lived there had at least been 
between her and Marie Antoinette an unbroken habit of 
command upon the one side, obedience and protest upon 
the other. The pressure of Vienna had been a natural 
one then. Maria Theresa possessed, moreover, the tact not 
only of a woman, and of a religious woman, but the large 
vision of a careful and perilous diplomacy brought to 
success. Joseph lacked all these: religion, honour, tact, 
acquaintance, experience. His commands to Mercy were 
as crude as any of his judgments upon ^the world: "Had 
Mercy seen the Queen?" "Was she doing her duty by the 



FIGAEO 185 

House of Austria?" "Would Mercy suggest this, that?" 
"Since the Queen was so powerful with the King, why had 
this, that detail of French policy not exactly suited the 
demands of the Empire ? " Broken by the buffer of Mercy's 
long experience these arid and unfruitful hastes came less 
brutally to the ears of Marie Antoinette. She never felt 
herself the servant of her family, nor in direct antagonism 
to the Crown of her husband; she felt only that she was 
perpetually required to be doing — she hardly knew what — 
much as in her mother's time, but without the aid of her 
mother's handwriting and remembered voice; certainly 
without her mother's wisdom to control. 

The pressure from Joseph II. continued; it was to be two 
years before it took effect in a great matter, but when that 
matter arose the Queen's plain service to Vienna — some- 
thing far in excess of what she had shown in the Bava- 
rian affair — showed how much that irksome and long 
pressure had ejffected. She came to act as an Austrian 
army would have acted, and quite understanding all she 
did, she came very near to betraying her allegiance to the 
French throne. 

For the rest these early months of '82 were filled, among 
her pleasures and her rising power, with other annoyances; 
notably that from time to time her friends in that exces- 
sive society of hers spoke to her of their debts, and she 
knew well that in the matter of money grants at that 
moment of increasing embarrassment in public finance the 
King himself was slow to listen to her. 

There were many such friends. The greatest and the 
nearest perhaps of those whom Marie Antoinette knew to 
be embarrassed were the Guemenees, and the Duchesse de 
Guemenee, the titular governess of the Dauphin, a woman 



186 ' MARIE ANTOINETTE 

whom she met most constantly and cherished, closely con- 
cerned her. 

She further suffered the ceaseless and recurrent advances 
of the Cardinal de Rohan. It had become enough for her 
to see his handwriting upon a note to make her burn the 
thing unread. Her dislikes were now often reasoned, always 
steady; it was enough that she had to meet the Grand 
Almoner upon State occasions of religion or ceremonial ; her 
society she forbade him. Had the Cardinal wanted proof 
of that stupidity which he was later to plead in Court as 
the excuse of his follies, he could have given none better, 
nor any of more weight with posterity, than his complete 
ignorance of such a woman as was this daughter of Maria 
Theresa, and his absurd advances to gain her intimacy, her 
support, and possibly her heart. Had he known women 
even vaguely, by types, this florid and handsome man would 
have abandoned at fifty the attempt to interest a vital, 
impetuous woman of twenty-seven, loving swift pleasure, 
but superior to him in rank, chaste, a mother, and carrying 
against him in particular a traditional grudge for the loose 
jests which, during a brief embassy at Vienna, he was wont 
to pass at the expense of her own people. But the Cardinal 
de Rohan did not know women even in the mass, and it 
was necessary, as he thought, that he should play cards 
with her and be from time to time one of the fifty or so 
who eat supper with her at Trianon. He had the weakness 
of stupid men when they are well born and have attained 
ofifice — I mean the ambition for political titles. 

A thousand lesser incidents of this time she could not 
herself, had you asked her daily, have recorded. One 
among such petty details it is worth the reader's while to 
recall, though it had made upon her even less impression 



FIGARO 187 

than the babble about Beaumarchais' play; though it 
passed completely from her memory. It was the presence 
now and then upon the stairways of Versailles, and for 
moments only, of a short woman, very fair, with a small, 
well-arched foot, and delicate hands, quick and even fur- 
tive of glance, not beautiful but attractive and provoking 
in face, dressed in a manner that combined excess with the 
evidences of poverty, but in her gestures of a passable breed- 
ing. This figure was often seen; now leaving the room 
of some lady of the Court, now crossing the courtyard on 
foot towards the town. 

The Queen may or may not have heard that this woman, 
though an adventuress, was (from over the left) a Valois; of 
some birth, therefore, but very poor, and given to borrowing 
small sums: Marie Antoinette's sister-in-law of Provence, 
Madame, may or may not have told the Queen that she 
had got this woman a tiny advance of thirty pounds upon 
her tiny pension of twenty -four. Whether her name of "De 
la Motte," or so much as the presence of this chance passer, 
was noted by Marie Antoinette is not known, but cer- 
tainly if either were it took no more place in her mind than 
any other of the hundred insignificant names she heard 
and forgot every day. Moreover, after the early spring of 
1782, this woman was no longer seen at Versailles; she had 
borrowed a few pounds, and Was gone. 

With May the true life of the Court and the active inter- 
ests of the Queen awoke to receive the first of those great 
political visits which form the historical pageant of Ver- 
sailles: the heir of Catherine of Russia came with his wife, 
and the whole year might almost have been named from so 
conspicuous an event. 

The inordinate pomp of royalty in its old age had led to 



188 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

a fashion of incognito which did not have, and was not 
intended to have, its occasional modern effect of privacy, 
but which, by cutting short interminable and necessary 
ritual, left a crowned traveller the freer for luxury and 
dissipation. It saved them the judges, the orators, the 
Governors, the Universities — in general the middle classes, 
and left them free for actors, wine, and their own com- 
pany, and the frenzied plaudits of the innumerable poor. 
The Emperor of Austria had set the fashion five years 
before; it was followed now by the Russian Court, and 
Catherine's son chose to present himself in France under 
the somewhat theatrical alias of the "Comte du Nord." 

The Grand-Duke Paul had the face of a Tartar, and — 
what was piquant — the manners, and, above all, the ready 
epigrams of a Parisian. His wife was a huge German 
woman, rather absolute and — what was curious — 
learned. For exactly a month they dominated the Court of 
France; from the end of May to the end of June they filled 
it with their presence, and not a little of the hankering after 
French things and French alliances, which, much later, 
distinguished Paul III. during the revolutionary wars, may 
have sprung from this short and vivid episode of his twenty- 
eighth year. 

It is characteristic of Marie Antoinette that the pros- 
pect of a great encounter and of the society of equals con- 
fused her; it is equally characteristic of her that once 
she had got over that nervousness she drew the young man 
and his wife at once into that rather isolated and over- 
familiar circle of intimates with which Mercy, her brother, 
and the French reproached her, but without which, as it 
seemed, she could not live. Behind the solemn and rare 
functions, the regal hospitality of the Condes at Chantilly 



FIGARO 189 

and the Court ball at Versailles, was a whole atmosphere 
of gambling and private theatricals; of plays at Trianon, 
intimate suppers, costly presents given at a moment's 
thought, and, very late at night, in the rooms of Madame de 
Polignac or in the Queen's, when the King had left them, a 
complete ease full of little improvised dances and familiar 
jests. In such an atmosphere the German Grand-Duchess 
maintained, perhaps a little stiffly, her formal compliments, 
but the Russian Grand-Duke went headlong; he suffered 
the spell; there was even a moment when he confided to 
the Queen his humiliation at home and the tyranny of his 
mother Catherine. 

Upon one matter the husband and the wife most cer- 
tainly agreed, for to the second it was belles-lettres, to the 
first Parisiana: they must have things read to them "by the 
authors." All the little tricks with which the wealthy 
and leisured inveigle the masters of the pen to visit 
their palaces, to amuse them for an hour, were set at work. 

Of the many so caught one was especially demanded, 
and the Queen heard again, not without boredom, the per- 
petual name of Beaumarchais. "Oh, yes, you must hear 
Beaumarchais ! " Madame de Lamballe had got him to 
her rooms. It was difficult, but she had got him. The 
Archbishop of Toulouse knew him well. He was splen- 
did. "You must hear him read this play of his; it has been 
forbidden, you know. It is seditious. It is so witty, 
and he does read it so well! " The Comte du Nord and his 
wife asked no better than to be in the swim. Beaumarchais 
was willing enough; he came and read to them, and they 
heard from his thin ironic lips, saw illustrated by his exact 
gesture and brilliant, ambitious little eyes, the edge and 
sharpness of a drama that worked — once it was public — 



190 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

like an acid, to the destruction of all their world. How 
they applauded! 

That warm month of long evenings that fade into early 
dawns shining with lamps in the park, with candles and 
mirrors in the vast length of the palace, was approaching 
its end, when, for the last time, Marie Antoinette devised 
her last considerable fete — once more at Trianon. 

It was to be a garden fete at night: by this time certainly 
wearisome to the Grand-Duchess, but to the Grand-Duke 
attractive — with this one flaw, that on the morrow he would 
be gone. The fete was held; it was brilliant and full. 
At its close when, as custom demanded, the royal party 
passed out, down a lane of guests on either side, the Queen 
saw — for a moment — a pair of red stockings ; the legs 
were neither meagre nor young. All the rest of the figure 
was a large dark cloak, but she caught beneath the hat of 
it the somewhat flushed and large face of the Grand Almoner. 

This little incident disturbed her. Here was a private 
gala of her own, given only to those of her private circle 
privately invited by her, and this odious man must creep in. 
Next day when her guests were gone she spent some por- 
tion of her considerable energy in ferreting out the culprit. 
The incident was traced to the lodge-keeper of Trianon, 
who had taken a bribe from the cardinal under a promise 
that if he were let in he would keep a strict disguise and 
would not penetrate into the gardens. The lodge-keeper 
was sent his way to starve, and later — since he really did 
begin to starve — was given back his place by this impul- 
sive woman. 

It was a very little though a very exasperating incident 
that a great ofiicer of the Crown, whom etiquette com- 
pelled her to meet in chapel, but whom she had carefully 



FIGARO 191 

excluded from her intimacy and her privileges, should have 
appeared by a trick at a party so especially her own. Per- 
haps she remembered it as one remembers for a long while 
petty accidents that have sharply moved us for an hour. 
He certainly remembered it, for he had been found out in 
no very dignified manoeuvres. He was certainly sore; 
but in men of his stupidity, of his privileges, and of his 
habits of luxury, hatred is no enduring passion. His ambi- 
tion, however, such as it was, remained; he was the 
more determined to succeed in that high object of 
recognition and of friendship with the Queen, from the 
results of this disastrous attempt and from the failure of 

his appearance on that June night at Trianon 

It was but a week later that Madame de la Motte came into 
Paris, called at his palace in the Marais, and reminded 
him of his earlier charities. 

The uneventful summer came and passed, full of the 
customary glories, of the customary distractions. No date 
marked evil or good. The American War, though it lan- 
guished, was now decided, and England had given up the 
struggle. The reform of the French finances, though cease- 
lessly a topic of council, was as ceaselessly neglected. The 
Emperor continues to badger Mercy, and Mercy to badger 
the Queen upon matters of no importance save to Joseph 
II. 's ill-considered plans of aggrandisement. 

Fersen, pottering between Philadelphia and Baltimore, 
wrote home — wearily — but not to her. 

It was a long summer of nothingness, during which 
Marie Antoinette's position was confirmed, her public view 



192 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

a trifle, if but a trifle, enlarged. With her habits permitted, 
her popularity sufficient, her influence established, she 
had a foretaste of that security such as should accom- 
pany middle life, and such as is native to women for whom 
such satisfaction is allied with maternity ; she turned for an 
added interest to her children. 

The little Princess Royal could talk and run; the baby 
Dauphin knew his sister already and moved his arms at 
her approach. The two children between them filled daily 
a larger and more natural place in the Queen's thoughts. 
They could not indeed weaken the habits which those 
first feverish three years had rooted and the next had done 
nothing to destroy, but their innocence and the nameless 
bond of flesh enlarged her; their growth, their surprising 
discovery of new days. It was not wholly without reason 
that the King their father grew at this moment to listen 
in smaller things to her advice beyond that of others. 

Ceremonial, or rather lucrative, as were the functions 
of the Princesse de Guemenee, she was yet constantly 
in attendance upon the children, of which she was titular 
governess, and the Queen was constantly in her society. 
The charge was a great one; if it had first been granted as 
a favour to one of the set of favourites, it had now ripened 
into something more, for the common interest in such a 
couple as Madame Royale and the heir gave rise, in this 
middle of '82, to an occasional communion between the 
Queen and the gouvernante, which neither found in the 
general and much more continual amusement of their set. 
Their intimacy was the greater that the children had been 
sent through the park to Trianon during the hot weather, 
that the Princesse de Guemenee was with them secluded 
there, and that there she and the Queen were necessarily 



FIGARO 193 

often alone together. In her favourite retreat and under her 
domestic trees, the approaching vaccination of the httle girl — 
a matter of moment at that time — and a dozen details of 
the sort concerned them. By a petty accident of a sort 
common to aristocracies, the Cardinal de Rohan, the 
Queen's aversion, happened to be own brother to Madame 
de Guemenee, the Queen's chief friend. Not a word was 
said in favour of that brother, for these were matters upon 
which even the Queen's favourites were compelled to keep 
silence; but the populace, who do not understand such 
complexities, remembered the relationship. 

The complaints of the lesser woman upon the debts of 
herself and her husband — though such complaints are 
wearing to the closest friendships — did no more than 
slightly weary the Queen. They were soon forgotten, for 
Marie Antoinette held in a profound manner that faith in 
chance good fortunes and in ultimate relief without which 
those who never labour could not live; and when the com- 
plaints were done with, she turned to speak of the children. 

So August w^ent by and most of September, when, one 
morning at the close of that month, Monsieur de Guemenee 
very suddenly declared that he could not so much as attempt 
to pay his debts, and threw himself upon his creditors. 

It was a shock. I have repeatedly insisted in this book 
upon the insignificance of French extravagance in the close 
of the eighteenth century, in comparison with the modern 
figures of our Plutocracy, and on the modesty of the sums 
the historian has to deal with — .£5,000 a year was a princely 
fortune; the Cardinal de Rohan's .£30,000 a year seemed 
almost the revenue of a State, an income beyond com- 
putation. Well, in such a world, accustomed to such a 
scale of wealth, the Guemenees went bankrupt for a solid 



194 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

million of our English pounds. It opened a whirlpool 
in the finances of the time, and the creditors, to make mat- 
ters worse, were of every rank and spread throughout the 
kingdom; there were peasants among them, prelates, far- 
mers-general, and — most clamorous of all — a few 
large and many small shopkeepers of Paris. To these 
last — especially to the smaller ones — delay would be 
fatal. Delay was precisely the expedient chosen. 

There exists a little, ill-written scrawl addressed to the 
princess; it is ill-spelt, with words omitted in its haste. 
It runs: "You have heard that my daughter's vaccination 
has gone off well — I breathe again ! . . . The King 
will see you get those letters all right." That scrawl was 
written by Marie Antoinette and the *' letters" mentioned 
were the Moratorium which a French King could of his 
own free will impose as might the caprice of a judge 
upon the process of law. It was a royal decree forbidding 
during the King's pleasure the recovery of a debt. The 
creditors must wait till it was lifted. 

That little scrap of paper was not known to the populace — 
it was not discovered till a few years ago — but the populace, 
with an instinct that rarely failed them during the pre- 
revolutionary and revolutionary time, guessed by what 
influence had been granted this privilege of delay; with all 
its fatal consequences to the smaller folk, who spread their 
anger until Paris was humming with it, and even the remoter 
provinces (notably Brittany), wherever there was a 
wretched unpaid creditor to be found, whispered the 
name of the Queen. 

She, upon her part, felt she had done next to nothing — 
an obvious and small act of courtesy for a dear friend. 
She had chosen that very moment to be at La Muette with 



FIGARO 195 

the Court — not at Versailles, to which such things were 
native, but right at the gates of Paris, and there thought 
fit to do something more for her friend than the trifle already 
effected. She went to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, 
Fleury — at a time when the Treasury in its deep embar- 
rassment was expecting the counter-shock of the Amer- 
ican War, at a time when the last additional taxes could 
hardly be paid — to ask him if (irony of ignorance!) "some- 
thing could not be done" for the Guemenees. Fleury could 
do nothing, and it was as well. 

All this while and all that summer and autumn the little, 
active, furtive woman, De La Motte, the Valois with the 
well-arched foot and the shifty but provocative eye, was 
pecking at De Rohan: now knocking discreetly at his palace 
doors in Paris, now travelling, as cheaply as could be, to his 
great chateau in the Vosges — borrowing a few pounds, and 
again a few pounds. It was a very little thing, like a drift- 
ing rag in a great city — but a rag infected with the plague. 
• ••••••• 

In such a commotion as the crash of the Guemenees 
made, no one noticed that the Queen procured for her 
chief friend, for one who hardly desired it and who was 
ill fitted for it, for Madame de Polignac, the high post 
which Madame de Guemenee had been compelled to resign. 
The new charges such an appointment involved were for- 
gotten in the torrent of feeling that followed the great bank- 
ruptcy. It came just as the excitement upon America had 
thoroughly died down, just as the bills for that war had 
to be met, and just as winter was upon the populace. The 
new taxes were collecting, the whole financial system wa§ 



196 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

at a breaking point, when early in '83, Fleury resigned 
the finances. His fall was furthered by the Queen, who 
remembered his refusal. 

If, a year before, the satire of Beaumarchais had been 
wisely suppressed by the King, and if nine months before, 
even the reading by heirs apparent of so fierce a piece of 
wit was thought hazardous, now it was plainly a peril. 
To extend the fame of that solvent of society, even by dis- 
creet recitations within the palace was unwise; to act it, 
to add to its native force of aggression gesture, life, and 
publicity of the stage, would be a piece of madness. Most 
ardently was that amusing piece of madness desired by the 
lassitude of the Court and by those amateurs in changing 
pastime who surrounded the Queen. It is said that she 
pleaded again for her friends, and* begged, as she had before, 
for the piece to be licensed. If she did so, she failed; for 
leave to act the " Mariage de Figaro," even upon the private 
stage of a courtier, was again refused. 

Side by side with such details went the growth of yet 
another great European conflict, and with it once again the 
pressure of Austria upon Marie Antoinette. 

For over a century the Scheldt had been closed to com- 
merce by international treaty, and the trade that should 
naturally flow along that magnificent estuary of which 
Antwerp is the port had been artificially deflected to Hol- 
land. The Austrian Netherlands were therefore mechan- 
ically starved of a trade that had once been pre-eminent 
in Europe. It was as though Lancashire should be for- 
bidden by a parchment to use Liverpool to-day, and should 
be dependent upon Preston or — as would more probably 
follow — upon Bristol and Glasgow. That part of the 
Low Countries which is, roughly speaking, the CathoUc 



FIGARO 197 

part and most of which is now included in Belgium formed, 
by an accident of history, an isolated fragment of the Haps- 
burg domain, and the closing of the Scheldt acutely affected 
a monarch whose mind, being narrow, was especially alive 
to anomalies that interfered with the rotundity of his rights. 
There was to Joseph II. something monstrous in the decay 
of Antwerp and the silence of that vast waterway — some- 
thing out of nature, like the diversity of tongues, within his 
empire; it was a sentiment he felt less keenly in matters 
less disadvantageous to himself. 

The chief beneficiary by this quaint artifice was, of 
course, Holland, but, among the greater powers, England. 
If anyone would know why, he has but to travel to-day 
from the Pool of London to Antwerp, and wonder next 
morning at the orderly and teeming crescent of the quays. 
Antwerp is London's chief and most dangerous rival. 

It was, therefore, during the failure of England in America 
that Joseph proposed the destruction of so ancient an 
instrument as the Peace of Westphalia and determined 
upon the opening of the river. To such a project the assent 
of France was essential, but the Cabinet of Versailles, in 
one of those acts of wisdom which were not unknown to 
the decaying Monarchy, postponed the discussion to the 
close of the war. The war had been over since the autumn 
of '82; the peace had been signed at Paris in the new year. 
It was in 1783, therefore, that there began the growing 
pressure of Joseph II. upon Mercy, of Mercy upon Marie 
Antoinette, to see that the interests of Austria in this matter, 
as in others of the past, should predominate at Versailles. 
This purely Austrian move, though it took months to 
mature, was the political motive of the whole year, and 
side by side with it, like a tiny instrument accompanying 



198 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

a loud orchestra, went the rising popular demand for 
Beaumarchais' play: also, just once or twice and for a 
moment only, one can hear in the background the occa- 
sional note of Madame de La Motte. Thus on Candlemas 
Day (a feast of the 2d of February) she was seen at Ver- 
sailles. It was a brief episode; she stood patiently in the 
rank of petitioners waiting for the Queen to pass upon her 
way to High Mass, and presented some modest demand — 
directly or indirectly — for money. It was refused, with a 
crowd of others, by the secretaries appointed to examine 
such things; and, if the Queen's eyes had rested upon her 
face at all, no sort of impression of her remained. The 
Queen entered the chapel, and the Cardinal de Rohan 
pontificated there. 

"Figaro" was more amusing and deserves a greater 
mention. All the jokes of the spring and all the society 
question was of *' Figaro." By June, somehow or other, by 
some intrigue, very possibly by a word from the Queen, 
the scandalous, the delightfully tickling attack upon all 
their privileges, their scandals — their very life ; the comedy 
that half of them already knew by heart, and from which 
the younger could recite whole passages in Beaumarchais' 
very manner, was to be acted at last — but only for the 
Court. Of course, such a scandal could not be allowed in 
Paris, or in the town. The Hall of the Menus Plaisirs was 
got ready, the parts were learnt, the actors of the Comedie 
Fran9aise were come, the courtiers and their wives had 
their tickets in hand, the carriages were at the door, the 
theatre half full, when a messenger came from the King 
bearing a lettre de cachet, a peremptory, secret and imme- 
diate order: the '* Mariage de Figaro" was not to be played. 

All who have seen a jostle of the wealthy suddenly 



FIGARO 199 

deprived of some pleasure — especially of a satire upon 
themselves — may imagine the anger that arose. Mean- 
while the King, who had bethought him so late of this 
vigorous act, murmured thoughtfully in his room that 
probably in the long run Beaumarchais would have the 
best of it. 

He had. By September M. de Vandreuil had the play 
ready for "the ladies" and young Artois — he had put up 
a private stage. The smart and the literary were assured 
there would be no disappointment — nor was there. Beau- 
marchais had been recalled by a special secret messenger 
from England, whither he had retired in a pretended 
pique; secret permission was given, the "Mariage" was 
secretly played (before two hundred people), and the thing 
was done. Play-acting and a sort of passionate frivolity 
had conquered the State. I must ask pardon for wasting 
so many lines upon so light a matter. 

Two greater things w^ere at hand: Calonne was about to 
be put at the head of the finances; Joseph 11. was begin- 
ning to be decisive about the Scheldt. 

The business of the Scheldt had dragged all through 1783. 
The active hostility of France and England had ceased a 
year before — to the grave disadvantage of England. 
Peace had been actually signed for nine months, yet noth- 
ing had been done, and the Cabinet of Versailles still tem- 
porised. To Joseph this recalcitrance upon the part of his 
ally was not only irritating, as had been years ago the French 
hesitation to support him in the Bavarian chance of war, 
it was incomprehensible; he could lay it to nothing but 
folly. To what depths of folly Versailles might descend 
he would admit even his clear brain incapable of judging. 
The French lay, as he conceived, open to every attack. 



200 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

Theirs was a power visibly in decay which had made 
indeed a chance lucky move beyond the Atlantic, but 
which could not long continue great. It was surely their 
duty, as it was obviously their policy, to be guided by 
Vienna. It was not till now — after so many years! — 
that he had come across the sharp French "jib" which has 
since his time disconcerted so many diplomatists. 

For the statesmen of that people, under every regime, 
at least, every modern regime (wherein I count the later 
ministers of Louis XV. and the anti-clericals of the present 
Republic) — have much in them, whatever their rank, of 
their own peasantry. It is as though the Frenchman, when 
he acts as a Minister for the collectivity of France, were 
collectively inspired and thought like the mass of plough- 
men that build up his nation. As the peasants perpetually 
bewail the weather, so he the times. As the peasants curse 
authority (which they are so zealous to maintain as a 
guarantee of property), so the statesman the regime of his 
epoch. As they will speculate rashly once in a gener- 
ation, so he in the Seven Years' War or in 1870. As they for 
years after such an error build up a fortune in the stodg- 
iest securities, so he will build up alliances and an army 
in the long periods of national repose. As they with pro- 
testations of ruin and yet with courtesy will relinquish 
as make-weight to a bargain some article wholly worth- 
less to them, so he will reluctantly throw into the diplomatic 
scale some barren or untenable possession overseas. As 
they in a bargain ask with the most natural air a most 
fantastic price, so he in a diplomatic proposition. But, 
above all, as the French Peasantry, when their apparent 
stupidity tempts the city man to ask for something that 
really concerns them, become first dumb, then nasty, so the 



FIGARO 201 

French Statesman, quite unexpectedly and in one day, 
clouds over and reveals an astonishing obstinacy to yield 
any point of material value to his nation. 

The opening of the Scheldt was of no advantage to 
France. The existence of a strong Austrian State to the 
north of her was a thing to avoid; the diplomatic tradition 
of a hundred years was in support of Holland, and, though 
the Austrian Alliance had changed much, it had been made 
to exercise pressure towards the Elbe, not towards the 
North Sea. Hence for all the courtesy, the postponements, 
the protestations of a continued warmth in the alliance and 
the rest of it, France steadily refused to move. The 
Emperor Joseph did something he had been slow to do of 
recent years : he wrote directly to his sister. 

Far off in the Vosges Madame deLa Motte,the little, proud, 
active woman with the furtive eyes, was closeted with the 
Cardinal de Rohan in his chateau of Saverne. She had, 
she told him, all but recovered her true place as a Valois; 
she needed aid for a very little time longer. Here was a 
bill upon a Jew, down on the plain in Nancy; quite a 
small bill — not a hundred and fifty pounds. The Car- 
dinal backed her bill. 

Marie Antoinette could not for the life of her have shown 
you the Scheldt on the map; she knew her own incom- 
petence, the advice she proffered was null or uncertain, 
and, in any case, whatever slight suggestion she may have 
made, was quite passed by in the counsels of her husband. 
From that moment Joseph was turned, if somewhat slowly, 
towards action. He would clear the Scheldt by force, and 



202 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

compel the Cabinet of Versailles to follow; he took his 
time and made his plan — but he did not succeed. 

The advent of Calonne was not the least of the acci- 
dents that impeded him, and Calonne's appointment with 
its large consequences was partly — as were now so many 
things — the work of the Queen. A man of fifty, pro- 
vincial, a gentleman, a good lawyer; Calonne was a friend 
of the Polignacs; and Marie Antoinette, on that account 
alone, supported his candidature to the Direction of Finance: 
when she knew him she grew to dislike him. He was 
intensely national, vigorous, gay, a trifle too rapid in 
thought, ambitious, virile with a Latin virility; he was of 
a type she could never affect, and it is certain that he de- 
spised her intellect and resented her interference with affairs 
— he probably showed it. 

But once he was appointed to the Treasury her dis- 
taste came too late. That department, as the entangle- 
ment of the public fortune increased in complexity, grew 
to absorb in importance every other. The complete 
autonomy of each minister within his department (which 
was a necessary consequence of Autocracy and the mark 
of government at Versailles) left him independent of his 
colleagues. The vast consequence of any Exchequer Act at 
that moment and thenceforward made the Exchequer 
supreme over War, over Home, and even over Foreign affairs. 

It is difficult to describe the man: his acts must de- 
scribe him. It is enough to say that he was not corrupt, 
that he carried through his attempt with courage, that he 
spent the public money largely and gaily to forward his 
plan of procuring a large increase of revenue rather than 
a large reduction of expenditure; that he was saddled with 
the remains of the American War debt; was heir in office 



FIGARO 203 

to dishonest and incompetent Necker, and that, so far as 
mere administration could, it was he in particular who 
later opened the Revolution by one act of courage, and 
not without deliberation, when he clearly saw that an active 
nation needed action to live: for it was he who summoned 
the Notables and so convened the first of the Assemblies. 



The winter of '83-'84 was very hard. The new taxes — 
imposed in the desperate attempt to fill the Treasury during 
the preceding year, before Calonne came, were just begin- 
ning to tell. The new loans — which were Calonne's own — 
hung over the prosperity of the State. . . . The 
Queen was at ease ; the letters of Rohan no longer came for 
her to burn; he no longer crept by. tricks into her presence. 
. . . Then there was "Figaro." "Figaro" was being 
talked of more than ever. . . . The King must give his 
consent ... he had given it to a private stage. . . . 
Come, would he not give it for the public ? The play lay 
there, in the minds of the leisured and the wealthy; it 
was potentially a destroyer of the State, on which they 
battened; but boredom is stronger than appetite with the 
smart, and the smart urged "Figaro" on towards its full 
and final publicity. 

The winter drew on towards spring. It still froze hard. 
Calonne continued loans and largesse. "To be free of 
tangle you must borrow; to borrow you must be at ease; 
to be at ease, you must spend." He spent largely upon 
the poor of Paris; he consented to fetes; he took the thing 
at a charge. As a nation in the grasp of a dreadful foe 
might w^in through by loan upon loan and pouring out fresh 
millions, bribing colonial soldiers recklessly — five, six. 



204 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

seven, ten shillings a day, and to hell with the commis- 
sariat — so he in the grasp of an embarrassed fiscal system 
that was dying in an agony and that nothing could recover. 
Such procedure invited force of itself; it paved the way for 
a vast physical, armed change to effect renewal. With the 
old regime no man could have done anything, not the gay- 
est or the most daring; and what regime has ever changed 
itself ? Colonne was killing the old regime. 

He even attempted to feed the people of Paris by free gifts. 
But still the people of Paris were not contented, and above 
them, in the ranks that make " Opinion," there was an in- 
creasing demand, an insistence for the '* Mariage de Figaro." 
It was already March, and the play was still disallowed. 

In his bishop's palace that March, the woman La Motte 
was telling the Cardinal de Rohan one of those truly consid- 
erable lies upon which history turns; a lie comparable to 
the lie of Bismarck at Ems — or to any other that any of 
my readers may cherish. The Cardinal sat listening, his 
florid, proud, prominent, unintelligent face all ears. ^' She 
had reached the result of so much patient waiting. Her 
dignity of Valois (and she was a Valois) was to be recog- 
nised; her lands (she had no lands) were to be restored to her. 
It was the Queen whom she had conquered: the Queen 
was now her friend, her intimate friend. The Queen would 
do anything in the world for her. Through her was Rohan's 
avenue to the Queen. Her poverty was at an end. She 
could soon repay so many years of his kindness.'' 

Marie Antoinette was concerned with little in those 
weeks; it is just possible she again spoke a word for that 



FIGARO 205 

eternal " Figaro." If she did she was but one of a hundred — 
and the King gave way. The censorship should be removed, 
but on condition that certain passages most offensive to the 
established order of the State should be deleted. On that 
point Louis would not budge ... it made all the 
difference. They were deleted, and the King — mis- 
judging now — said (not without foreboding): "I hope 
it will be a frost." On the first night the Public 
answered him. 

A vast crowd broke for hours against the railings of the 
Comedie Fran9aise, a crowd in which every kind of man 
was crushed against every kind. The doors opened to a 
mob that stormed the theatre like a citadel, and that, when 
it entered, could see, in reserved places, and entered in earlier 
than the public, every head in Paris that counted. Even 
Monsieur, deep in his private box, was there, and there 
behind their bars were the Parliament, the Ministry — even, 
discreetly, the Church. 

The play began. . . . To-day, in a society which it has 
helped to create, its jests seem obvious, its epigrams plati- 
tudes. To that eager people, starved of reform in the 
midst of a huge transformation of society, they were bril- 
liant exactitudes of wit, struck off like bright coins — 
precisely the thing desired. This man found satisfied as 
the play proceeded his revenge against bought law, that 
man his brooding against an old insult of privilege, that 
other his disgust at an apparent national decline, yet 
another his mere hunger: and all these Frenchmen found in 
the play an echo of their national contempt for a government 
that cannot excuse itself, even by logic; all found and each 
found his necessity for passion against existing things 
assuaged by the sparkle and the venom of the play. They 



206 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

roared at it with delight as men do at the close of suc- 
cessful assault. They laughed as do men satisfied to reple- 
tion. They felt a common enemy gone under. There was 
not one so privileged but had heartily supped of ridicule 
against some aspect of the society he had learnt to despise. 
The curtain fell to a storm of triumphant noise. The 
Parisians went out into the darkness full and fed with 
the idea of change, and a great crack had opened in the 
walls of the palace. It was the 27th of April, 1784. 



IX 

THE DIAMOND NECKLACE 

FROM APRIL 27, 1784, TO AUGUST 15, 1785 

A S the summer of 1784 broadened through May and 
/-% June, it led on the Queen to every grace of life, 
and at last, as it might have been imagined, 
to security. The season itself was fruitful and serene: 
the establishment of prestige abroad — so often a forerun- 
ner of evil to European nations — was now triumphantly 
achieved. There was now about the Court an air of solidity 
and permanence, which the visits of foreign princes continued 
to confirm, and this air (thanks to Calonne's largesse) 
seemed less poisoned by that financial ill-ease which had 
turned even the last victories of the American War into 
doubtful and anxious things. 

Marie Antoinette had entered into that content and calm 
which often introduces middle age after a youth tormented 
by an inward insecurity. Her inheritance was sure. Her 
children had not yet betrayed the doom of their blood. 
The legend of her follies meant daily a little less, because 
daily it became more and more of a legend worn by time, 
dangerous only if its set formula should be filled with life 
and reality by some new scandal. The violence of her youth 
now seemed exorcised; her fulness of feature, which had 
shocked the taste of Louis XV. 's Court, accorded with these 
her later functions of authority. She was indeed in that full 
flower of womanhood which later so perturbed the memories 

207 



208 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

of Burke and lent one famous passage of sincerity to his 
false political rhetoric. 

As Marie Antoinette so entered at last into maturity, and, 
it would seem, into peace, the comedy which was to bring 
upon her every humiliation entered upon the Stage of this 
World. In the waters below her, Jeanne de La Motte de 
Valois, fishing for goldfish, struck and landed her Cardinal. 

Gustavus of Sweden, Northerner and Flibbertigibert, 
the same that had slung diamond necklaces round the Du 
Barry's little dog and the same that had despised the 
Dauphine, was at Court in the early days of that June, 
and saw the Queen now a woman; his affections were 
immediately moved. There was a ,touch of flirtation 
between them; on her side also a real friendship which 
for years continued in correspondence — for the softness 
of the North never failed to soothe and to relieve this 
Austrian woman caught in the hardness of French rules 
and the pressure of French vitality. He had come as the 
"Comte de Haga," and she feasted him well. That new 
toy, a balloon, was sent up to amuse him — she had it called 
by her name — and he was shown all that Trianon could 
show by day or by night. She was the more gracious from 
the awkwardness of Louis, who came ill-dressed to meet 
Gustavus and who was slow with him. She gave him 
deference. She consented, at one great supper of hers, 
to stand with her women and supervise all, while he was 
seated. Only she would not dance with him; she said she 
danced no more. . . . 

Meanwhile, accompanying the King of Sweden and ever 
at his side, Fersen was come again to Versailles. 

He was now a man. War had made him. Marie 
Antoinette could silently watch in him a very different car- 




MARIE ANTOINETTE 
By Madame Vigee Le Brun 



THE DIAMOND NECKLACE 209 

riage and a new alertness of the visage, but his eyes still bore 
the tender respect that she had known and remembered. 

He was now for some years to come and go between 
Versailles and the world. He was a Colonel of French 
Horse, and his place was made. . . . 

The King of Sweden went down well; the Court was full 
of him. The Queen surpassed herself in well-receiving him. 

The month of June was filled with this sincere and pleas- 
ing gaiety; but all that June, far off, the La Motte was 
going and coming in her secret ways, talking to the Cardinal 
of letters to her "from the Queen," assuring him that these 
letters gave proof of his growing favour. She did more and 
boldly; she affected to show him those royal letters! 

There was a soldier of sorts, cynical, ramshackle, hard 
up, like all her gang, Retaux de Villette by name; he it 
was w^ho wrote these letters whenever the La Motte might 
ask him — so much a time. They must have amused him as 
he wrote them ! He was at no pains to disguise his hand ; 
he wrote straight out to his "dear heart," the Comtesse 
de La Motte Valois, anything she asked him to write — 
especially praise of Rohan — and when he had written it 
(at so much a time) he would boldy sign " Marie Antoinette" 
with a flourish; and the La Motte would show the letter 
to Rohan, and Rohan (that is the amazing and simple 
truth) would believe them to be the Queen's! 

If the Cardinal had any doubts at all they were easily 
dispersed. Cagliostro, who enjoyed the Illumination of the 
Seventh House, and had powers from the other world, most 
strongly reassured him — for a fee; the seen and unseen 
powers all combined to reassure the fatuous Rohan, and he 
was ready, as June ended, to believe not only that he was 
in favour with the Queen, but in very peculiar favour 



210 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

indeed, and that all this show of avoidance and silence upon 
her part was a mask necessary to conceal a deeply-rooted 
tenderness. She might turn her head away when the 
Grand Almoner passed on his rare and pompous occa- 
sions of ecclesiastical office in the galleries of Versailles. 
She might refuse to speak to him a single word. She 
might, whenever she deigned to speak of him to others, 
speak with complete contempt and disgust. She might 
(as she had and did) successfully prevent the smallest 
honour or moneys coming to him. But, oh! he saw it all! 
It was but a mask to hide her great love — and, sooner or 
later, he would have his reward for such long and patient 
waiting ! 

He in his turn wrote — constantly. To the letters the La 
Motte showed him — dainty scented notes on little dainty 
sheets of gilded blue (but written, alas! by such rough 
hands) — he would answer, with imploring, respect- 
ful, adoring lines, handed to the La Motte that she 
might give them to her great and high friend. Now he 
could understand why Cagliostro had promised him in 
oracular enigmas that "glory would come to him from 
a correspondence," and that "full power with the Govern- 
ment" was immediately awaiting him. He was ready to 
assume it. 

July was empty enough for the Queen. Her guest was 
gone; there was little doing at Versailles. Her amuse- 
ments, especially her theatre, she had deliberately given up, 
determined to let the legend against her die. She waited 
through the dull month a little worried. Her brother 
the Emperor was still fussing about his diplomatic quarrel, 
the opening of the Scheldt, and the rest of it; she was 
anxious for him and for peace. Henry of Prussia would 



THE DIAMOND NECKLACE 211 

soon be visiting Versailles, there intriguing (as she dreaded) 
against her Austrian House. But, on the whole, the 
month of July, 1784, was a dull month for her. It was 
not dull for the La Motte. 

The male La Motte in early July sauntered, on those 
fine, sunny days, in the Palais Royal. He was looking for 
something; he was looking for a face and a figure not too 
unlike those of the Queen of France. It was not a difficult 
thing to find ; the type was common enough, and in the first 
days of his search he found it. The woman was a woman 
of the town, young, with a sw^elled heart, as it were, and no 
brains; she was timid, she was ready to swallow anything 
offered her. He follow^ed her with gallantry, and found 
that her professional name was D'Oliva; her true name 
the more humble one of Le Quay. For a week or so this 
new lover of hers went on like any other, he appeared and 
reappeared most naturally; but when the week was over 
and he had grown most familiar to her — and perhaps 
with his birth and high accent most revered — La Motte 
confided to her great and flattering news. There was a 
great Lady at Court who sought her aid in a matter of vast 
importance, and that great Lady spoke perhaps for a Lady 
greater still. The grandeur of the position was left to 
brew, and on the 22d of July, when it was already 
dusk, the great Lady (who was the female La Motte) 
swept into the poor girl's humble lodgings — a vision of the 
Court and the high world; she told the wide-eyed hussy 
things that seemed too lofty for human ears. The Queen 
had need of her. 

For herself (said the La Motte) she was the Queen's 
one great, near friend (she showed a letter — one of the 
famous letters), and if the D'Oliva would do as she was 



212 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

begged to do, the gratitude of the Queen would far excel 
in effect the paltry 400 pounds that she, La Motte, would 
give. Come, would she help the Queen ? 

Oh, yes! the D'Oliva would help the Queen! She would 
come next day to Versailles ! 

Why, then, all was well. . . . And that very night, 
post-haste, the interview over, Madame de La Motte 
galloped off to Versailles to take a room with her maid. 

For the Queen the dreary month was ending — there 
was no trouble upon her horizon. She had written again 
to Sweden; she asked for, and obtained, the reversion 
of the See of Albi for a friend of the King of Sweden's. 
There was no other news. 

History does not show perhaps one situation more 
wonderfully unlike the common half-happenings, com- 
plexities and reactions of real life, nor one more won- 
derfully fulfilling the violent and exact, simple, and pre- 
arranged ironies of drama, than the contrast of that night: 
the Queen in the palace, ignorant of any ill save the old 
and dwindling tales against her, listless after a summer 
month of idleness and of restraint — and coming right up 
at her, down the Paris road, the woman who was to des- 
troy her altogether. 

The La Motte and her maid got into Versailles very late. 
They took rooms at the Belle Image. Next day La Motte 
and RetauXjthe soldier, came, bringing the poor girl D'Oliva, 
with them; and after a short walk in the town, during 
which she was left in the hotel with that "great Lady," 
before whom she trembled, they told D'Oliva that they 
had seen the Queen and that all was well. They waited 
till the morrow. On the evening of that morrow, the 
24th of July, Madame de La Motte warned the D'Oliva 



THE DIAMOND NECKLACE 213 

that the time was come. She dressed her all in white, 
magnificently; she gave her a letter and a rose, and said: 
"To-night we go into the Park together, and there you 
will see for a moment a great Lord. Give him this 
letter and that rose, and say these words: 'You know 
my meaning!' You will have no more to do." It was 
about eleven, a dark night and no moon, when the two 
women went together into the vast gardens of the palace. 

As you stand in the centre of the great fa9ade of Ver- 
sailles, and look westward down a mile of formal lawn and 
water, there lie to your left in the palace what were the 
Queen's rooms, and to your left in the gardens a large 
grove called *'the Queen's Grove," in which are the trees 
that can be seen nearest to her windows or to be reached 
most quickly from what were her private doors. 

Near and within this grove, by an appointment which 
the La Motte had sworn him to observe, paced and repaced 
the Cardinal. The La Motte had told him he would see 
the Queen. 

In an enormous cloak of dark mysterious blue that 
covered his purple to the heels, in a broad soft hat that 
flapped down and hid his face, this fool of magnitude paced 
the gardens of Versailles and waited for the delicious hour. 
Behind him as he paced followed respectfully a man of his — 
one Planta, a sort of insignificant noble. The hour came. 
The La Motte found the Cardinal. She led him along a 
path among the high trees — and there for a moment near 
a hornbeam hedge that grew there, he saw dimly a woman 
in white, showing tall and vague in the darkness. This 
figure held forward to him in some confusion a rose, and 
said very low, "You know my meaning!" Rohan seized 
the hem of the white dress and kissed it passionately but 



214 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

before another word could pass a man came forward at 
speed and whispered as in an agony: "Madame! D'Artois 
is near — Madame!" The La Motte said " Quick ! . . ." 
The thing in white sHpped back into the shadow of a 
bush, the Cardinal was hurried away — but his life had 
reached its summit! He had heard dear words from the 
lips of the Queen! . . . 

Marie Antoinette was asleep perhaps, or perhaps chat- 
ting, muffled, with Polignac's wife, or perhaps, more likely, by 
her children's nursery beds, watching their repose and ques- 
tioning their nurse in the wing of the great palace hard by. 
A hundred yards away, in the darkness of the grove out- 
side, that scene had passed which set the train of her 
destiny alight; and the explosion caused by it ruined all 
that creviced society of Versailles and cast it down, casting 
down with it the Queen. 

There existed at that time a necklace. Fantastic stories 
have been told of its value; of those sovereigns to whom it 
was offered, and who, with a sigh, had been compelled 
to refuse it. It may very likely have been offered to Marie 
Antoinette (with her old passion for jewels) some years 
before, in '79, after the birth of her first child. It may be 
that the King would have given her the expensive 
thing — £64,000 was the price of it — it may be he had 
never seen it. At any rate, all the world knew that 
the unrivalled necklace existed, and had for some years 
existed as the property of two Court jewellers who worked 
in partnership, Boehmer and Bassange, and that they 
could not find a purchaser. The reader should remember 
this necklace, for though it will not be before him till six 
months after this July of '84, yet, but for the scene in the 
"Queen's Grove," Rohan would never have handled it. 



THE DIAMOND NECKLACE 215 

and had Rohan never handled it, there would not have 
arisen that enormous scandal that came so opportune to 
new rumours and new angers, and in the end dragged down 
the Queen. 



With August came Prince Henry of Prussia and all the 
bother of him. The Emperor was pressing the Dutch 
more and more. France was half inclined to prevent that 
pressure, in spite of the Austrian Alliance. France was 
determined, at any rate, to prevent Austria, allied or not, 
from strengthening herself upon the North and East. 
England, to keep the Scheldt shut, was more than half 
inclined to prevent that pressure, in spite of Holland's 
attitude during the American War. Prussia stood by to 
gain — and part of Prussia's chance was the opportunity 
of feeling and influencing Louis XVI. 's Cabinet. 

Prince Henry came, as Frederick's brother, to feel and to 
influence; to see how much could be done by way of separ- 
ating Vienna from Versailles. It was a strain on the Queen. 
AVliat could she know of these intrigues and counter- 
intrigues.^ She saw things, now as ever, few and plain; 
she saw a Prussian separate her House and the House into 
which she had married. Therefore Prince Henry's visit 
was a difficulty to her. She solved it as one might expect 
of her character, by avoiding him. She wrote to the King 
of Sweden a little too familiarly, and assured him that she 
had hardly seen the visitor: she "was at Trianon continually, 
with intimates only." Paris thought much of him (for 
Prussia was then, as now, efficient) ; she was very properly 
fatigued, but, improperly, she did not conquer her fatigue. 
During all his stay he saw her perhaps not half a dozen 



216 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

times, though he (as might be expected of his character or 
of any of his descendants, ancestors, or collaterals) stayed 
on and on and on. ... He stayed steadily on in France 
till November! — and before November enough had 
happened ! 

The little Dauphin was really ill. His mother was 
anxious. St. Cloud was bought for him, in some vague 
hope that the "air" was better there — as though the "air" 
of one suburb more than another could cure the rickets of 
the Bourbons. 

Next, it was known that the Queen was again with child. 
She wrote of it (familiarly enough) to the King of Sweden. 

More than this, war was apparent. The Emperor's 
smouldering quarrel with the Dutch had broken into flame; 
upon the 4th of October, 1784, an Imperial ship had sailed 
up the Scheldt to see if the Dutch would oppose an entry. 
The Dutch did oppose it ; they shot at the Imperial ship and 
took it, and every ruler in Europe put his hand to the hilt 
of his sword. 

So far Marie Antoinette had done little at Versailles, 
but be worried by all this complex quarrel; a fortnight 
before the incident she had told her brother that "really 
she was not so important at Versailles"; she hoped it was 
a thing to shirk. Now that the guns had begun, she was in 
a panic and made a call upon her old and natural violence. 
She effected little: Vergennes and the tradition of French 
diplomacy were too much for such tantrums, but the 
superficial aspect of her action was striking. It was known 
that she continually saw the King, that she made scenes, 
that she stormed. It was known that she was "Austrian" 
in all this, if it was not understood by the people that she 
had failed. On the contrary, when in the upshot a com- 



THE DIAMOND NECKLACE 217 

promise was arranged, she appeared once more in that 
most odious light — a woman sending French tribute to 
Vienna. 

For when the Emperor consented to the closing of the 
Scheldt (it was not till February of the next year that he 
gave way) , the French Cabinet, which had firmly supported 
Holland, was gradually influenced to guarantee the indem- 
nity which the dignity of the Imperial Crown demanded: 
it was close on ten million florins.' The Dutch refused so 
large a sum. The Queen wrote, cajoled, insisted in favour 
of her brother, her House, and Austria. The French Foreign 
Office, true to its tradition of taking material interests 
seriously, stood firm and backed Holland steadily. At last 
the French agreed to take over and to pay as sponsors for 
Holland one-half the sum demanded of the Dutch Govern- 
ment, if thereby they might avoid war in Europe. The 
payment was due to the Queen's vigour or interference, and 
meanwhile there had arisen one of those large and sud- 
den affairs which give everything around them a new mean- 
ing, which emphasise every coincident evil, and draw 
together into their atmosphere every ill-will and every 
calumny. Just before Marie Antoinette appeared before 
the populace as one who was sending millions of French 
treasure to her foreign brother, came the explosion — in the 
interval of all this diplomacy and negotiation — of what is 
called in history "The Affair of the Diamond Necklace." 
The truth with regard to that famous business is as 
follows : — 

When the Cardinal de Rohan left the Park that mid- 
night of July after the rapture of a word from the ridic- 
ulous D 'Oliva, he was fallen wholly in the hands of the 

• The fiction of the indemnity is entertaining. The Dutch were to yield Maestricht as the equivalent to the 
Emj/eror's granting the closing of the Scheldt. The indemnity was to " redeem " Maestricht. 



218 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

La Motte. She it was, as he thought, who had done this 
great thing for him. She had given him the Queen; and 
he was now entirely sure of his right to act for Marie 
Antoinette and to serve her. The La Motte began by 
begging money of him for the Queen's pet charities. She 
obtained it: first, two or three thousand pounds at the end 
of August. Retaux wrote the letter: *'It was for people 
whom she wanted to help." Retaux signed it with his 
"Marie Antoinette": and Rohan paid. A few pounds of 
it went to the unhappy woman whom La Motte had used, 
the rest to creditors or show. Much of the time when the 
Scheldt business was at its height, just as Prince Henry was 
leaving and all were talking of the Queen, in the autumn of 
1784 a new letter came (again from Retaux' hand) asking for 
jour thousand. There was the signature '* Marie Antoinette," 
there the beloved terms, and Rohan blindly paid: his man 
took the money to the La Motte, *'to give the Queen." 
The Cardinal was sure of his way now; he was a master; 
the Queen was under obligation to him. The money was 
spent in a very lavish display by the male and the female 
La Motte. They travelled with grandeur; they visited 
in a patronising manner the earlier home of their poverty; 
they lived high. With the end of the year 1784 more 
money was needed — and here enters into history that 
diamond necklace which had so long been waiting its cue 
to come upon the stage. 

The name of La Motte was now current — in the mouth 
alone and among the populace, not at Court — for one ' 
who could do much. Bassange heard, from a friend, of the 
La Mottes: of Madame de La Motte. He sent the friend 
to see whether his white elephant of a necklace could be 
moved towards that quarter. Madame de La Motte said 



THE DIAMOND NECKLACE ^Id 

wisely that she must see the jewels, a day or two after 
Christmas. She saw them; for three weeks they were kept 
on the hook. Upon the 21st of January, 1785, a date 
that has appeared before and will appear again in this 
history, she sent and told them that the Queen would buy, 
but (in her usual manner) a "great lord" would be the 
intermediary; and on the 24th, by the time it was full 
daylight, the great lord came in the winter morning to do 
that little thing that led to so much at last. It was the 
Cardinal de Rohan who came, handled the jewels, bar- 
gained, promised four payments (at six-monthly intervals) of 
£16,000 each, the first for the first of August (the date 
should be noted), and demanded delivery on the 1st of 
February. The jewellers brought the gems on that day to 
his great palace in the Marais, and he then told them 
frankly that the buyer behind him was the Queen. 

They saw her signature, "Marie Antoinette de France"; 
they saw a part at least of her letter, to the effect that she 
the Queen was not accustomed to accommodation and there- 
fore begged him to negotiate. They were satisfied, left the 
necklace, and were gone. That night the Cardinal gave 
it to Madame de La Motte at Versailles, or rather, hiding 
himself in an alcove, saw it given to a man who acted the 
part of the Queen's messenger and who was, of course, 
Retaux. 

All this, I say, passed on the 1st of February, 1785. 

Next day, Candlemas — just two years after Madame de 
La Motte had made her desperate effort to approach the 
Queen with a petition — Rohan and the jeweller, one as 
Grand Almoner in the high religious function of the day, 
the other as a man in the crowd, each watched the royal 
party go by and noted the Queen; each missed the jewel 



no MARIE ANTOINETTE 

that surely she should be wearing on the morrow of its 
purchase, and each saw that it was not yet worn. Each 
for different reasons wondered, but each for different rea- 
sons was silent, and each determined, for different reasons, 
to wait. Meanwhile the necklace was in the custody of 
the male La Motte ready for its journey to London, the 
refuge of the oppressed. 

Lent passed. On Easter Sunday the Queen's third 
child — he who became the Dauphin of the Imprisonment 
— was born. If, thought Rohan, the Queen had purposely 
waited before putting on the necklace, in order to avoid a 
coincidence of date between his visit to the jewellers and 
her first wearing of the gem, surely a long enough space 
would have passed by the time of the Relevailles, the cere- 
monial churching in Notre Dame which followed the birth 
of every member of the Blood Royal. The Relevailles ap- 
proached. It was more than eight months since the Cardinal 
had been given that rose at midnight, and he began to grow 
anxious. The necklace haunted him. . . . Far off in 
London, the male La Motte was selling, stone by stone, 
the better part of it; the rest Retaux was carefully dis- 
posing of in Paris itself. 

It was on May 24 that the Queen proceeded to Paris 
for the ceremony of the Relevailles. All the antique gran- 
deur was there and the crowds, but over all of it and over 
the crowds a new and dreadful element of popular silence. 
The guns saluted her through a silent air. In the streets 
of the University the very wheels of her carriage could be 
heard, so hushed was the crowd. The rich in the opera 
that evening cheered her, but going in and coming out 
through popular thousands she heard no cheers. She 
supped in the Temple with Artois, whose appanage the 




PORTRAIT BUST OF THE DUKE OF NORMANDY 

The second Dauphin, sometimes called Louis XVII., who died in the Temple. 

This bust was broken in the fall of the palace, and has recently 

been recovered and restored to Versailles 



THE DIAMOND NECKLACE 221 

liberties of the Temple were, and she could see through 
the night in his garden, as she had seen so often before in 
his feasts and his receptions, the dimmer and more huge 
from the blaze of light near by, that ominous great 
Tower which, it is said, she had always dreaded and 
dreaded more acutely now with an access of superstitious 
fear. "Oh! Artois, pull it down!" The Grand Almoner 
was present at this high function; he watched her and 
marvelled that the necklace should still be hidden away. 

The next morning she could be certain how Paris had 
changed. There was throughout its air a mixture of indif- 
ference and of dislike that poisoned her society with it. 
Paris now thought of her fixedly as the living extrava- 
gance of the Court. St. Cloud was at their gates to reproach 
her, with its title of the "Queen's Palace," its printed 
"Queen's" orders on the gate. The Deficit was there to 
reproach her. Her very economies, the lesser festivities, 
the abandoned journeys of the Court, her rarer and more 
rare appearances in the capital, the lack of noise in Trianon, 
were, in the public mouth, a consequence of past excesses. 
The judgment was false, but it stood firm. 

Her undue influence over the King and the councils of 
the King was another legend, less false than that of gross 
extravagance. There was no proof, but a crowd has more 
judgment than an isolated man, and the crowd divined 
what we now know. They had divined it in this critical 
year which saw France balancing on the verge of war with 
Austria, and which, before its close, saw the payment of 
the Dutch indemnity by the French to the Queen's brother 
at Vienna. All her action for twelve months was wholly 
Austrian in their eyes, and they were wholly right. It was 
in such a popular atmosphere, so sullen and so prepared. 



222 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

full for a year past of "Figaro's" ironic laughter against a 
regime already hurrying to its end, that the explosion of that 
summer was to come; for the 1st of August was near, 
and with it the time for the first instalment upon the 
necklace. 

In June the Comte de La Motte was back from London 
paying part of the money he had received for the diamonds 
to a Paris banker — one Perregaux. 

In July — on the mid-Tuesday of the month — Boehmer, 
in his capacity of Court Jeweller, brought to Versailles 
certain jewels. He brought with him also a letter which 
he gave to the Queen at midday as she came out of Mass; 
he gave her the letter with mystery and with profound 
respect, and was gone. The Queen read that note; it was 
incomprehensible to her. It assured her of her jewellers' 
unalterable devotion; it begged her to believe that Boehmer 
and Bassange were willing to accept her "latest proposals," 
and it ended with their satisfaction that ^Hhe finest set of 
diamonds in the world should adorn the greatest and the best 
of its Queens." Whether Marie Antoinette had even heard 
of the necklace in the past we cannot tell, though prob- 
ably, like all the rest of the world, she had. Whether she 
had or not, the note was equally mysterious to her. The 
Comptroller of the Household, the Baron de Breteuil, was 
told of the little bother; he sent for Boehmer, asked him 
what on earth the note meant, but he only received mys- 
terious replies leading nowhere. 

If it be asked by the reader why, seeing a complication 
of some sort before her, Marie Antoinette did not at once 
order an investigation to be pursued by the police, the 
answer is simple enough to anyone acquainted with her 
character: the annoyance bored her. Her instinct was 



THE DIAMOND NECKLACE 223 

simply to avoid it. She may (some say so) have spared 
herself trouble upon some theory that the jeweller was 
mad: anyhow, she spared herself the trouble. 

If it be asked how the complication ever arose, why that 
enigmatical letter was written, and why, once written and 
delivered, Boehmer should have hesitated and equivocated 
meaninglessly in his answers to Breteuil, the answer is 
simple when one hears what had just passed in that lower 
world of duped Cardinal and intriguing, most impudent 
of adventurers, rapscallions, and spiritualists. 

Madame de La Motte had been driving Retaux of late 
to write more frequently than ever his "Marie Antoinette" 
letters to the Cardinal. The poor soldier was not a woman, 
he was not even a writer of fiction, and he had been kept 
hard at it to force the note of love so often and in such 
various ways; until at last, one letter had been ordered 
of him saying, as the date of the first instalment approached, 
that "really the price was too high." Couldn't the Car- 
dinal, for her sake, get some £8,000 off the price ? If he 
could, the Queen would pay on the 1st of August, not the 
£16,000 then due, but a full £28,000. The Cardinal read 
and obeyed. The jewellers were agreeable. Hence Boeh- 
mer's note of July 12th, and hence (since he was con- 
vinced that the Queen, by the very method of her pur- 
chase, desired secrecy above all things) his evasive replies 
to De Breteuil. 

Thus, in that world beneath of which she knew nothing, 
things were coming to an issue against Marie Antoinette: 
one last event did all. Upon the Saturday before the pay- 
ment was due, the Cardinal (acting upon a further letter) 
gave Boehmer something over £1,000 and said to him that it 
was free money — over and above the fixed price — to 



224 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

console him for the unwelcome news that the first instal- 
ment could not be met quite punctually. Come, the 
Queen would certainly pay on the 1st of October; it was 
but two months to wait. He had seen it in a note of 
the Queen's which the Comtesse de La Motte [had just 
shown him. 

It is probable that even the Cardinal had become sus- 
picious now — he says as much himself — but his pride and 
his fear of exposure held him. As for the jeweller, the 
interview of that Saturday broke his back; he was dis- 
tracted. On the Tuesday (or the Wednesday) the climax 
of the comedy was reached. The Comtesse de La Motte 
met the two partners Boehmer and Bassange together and 
told them boldly that the signature "Marie Antoinette de 
France" was a forgery — so there! In the stupefaction that 
followed she added the quiet advice that for their money 
they must bleed the Cardinal — "He had plenty" — and 
so left them. 

Then followed that general scurry which is the note of 
embroglios as they flare up towards their end. Bassange 
runs here, Boehmer runs there; the one to Kohan in his Epis- 
copal Palace, the other to those who can help him with the 
Queen — notably to Madame de Campan, who has left an 
exaggerated and distorted account of the interview. To 
Bassange the Cardinal (anything to gain time in the hurly- 
burly) swears the signature is true; to Boehmer Madame 
de Campan, with her solid, upper-servant face, announces 
the redundant truth that he seems to have been let in. 
As for the La Motte, she flies to Rohan, and he (any- 
thing to keep things dark and to protect a witness to his 
incalculable stupidity of a coxcomb) consents to hide her; 
he gives her asylum in his great house. 



THE DIAMOND NECKLACE 225 

Next Boehmer goes to Versailles — at once — and im- 
plores the Queen to see him. The Queen has really had 
her fill of this kind of thing; she refuses. But next week 
she consents, and the revelations begin. 

It was at such a moment, with such storms about her, in 
the full and growing unpopularity of her Austrian influence 
in the affair of the Dutch indemnity, in the full and grow- 
ing renascence of the legend of her extravagance, that 
Marie Antoinette had determined not only to play once 
more in her theatre at Trianon — the chief reproach of the 
past, a legend with the populace for unqueenly exposure, 
for lack of dignity, for expense — not only to break her 
wise resolve, which had been kept for more than a year, 
that her plays should cease, but actually to play another 
piece by that same Beaumarchais whose wit was the spear- 
head of the attack upon the old regime. The decision 
came neither of cynicism nor of folly upon her part; it came 
of tragic ignorance. 

It was while she was rehearsing her part of "Rosine" 
that she was persuaded — probably by Madame de Cam- 
pan herself — to send for Boehmer and to hear his tale. 
He came upon the 9th of August, Tuesday, by the Queen's 
command, to Trianon. At first he simply asked for the 
money he believed his due. When he saw that Marie 
Antoinette neither understood why it should be paid, nor 
for what, nor by whom, he told the whole story as he had 
heard it. He w^as sent off to write down coherently and at 
length in a clear memorandu|a the details of this amaz- 
ing thing, and when he had gone the Queen raved. 

Each consequence and aspect of the abomination, as 
each successively appeared to her, struck her with separate 
and aggravated blows. Her name linked with a libertine 



226 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

whom, of all libertines, she most loathed — a man who was 
the object of her dead mother's especial contempt! 
The half-truths that would come in; her love of jewellery — 
now long conquered, but now widely remembered! Her 
secret debts — now long paid, but already a fixed idea 
in the public mind! At the best that such a man had 
thought it conceivable that she should be such a woman; 
at the worst that the world might believe it! 

Upon Friday the report of Boehmer came in. She mas- 
tered it that day and the next, and on Sunday the 14th, the 
eve of the Assumption, she begged her husband to spend all 
the day with her at Trianon. He willingly came. They 
together — but surely at her initiative — determined on a 
public trial. Mercy would have done what we do now in 
England when there is danger of public scandal and the 
weakening of government; he would have paid the La 
Motte woman something to be off. Vergennes was strongly 
in favour of silence — as strongly as Downing Street would 
be to-day — for he was of the trained diplomatic kind. The 
King's honour, the Queen's intense and burning indignation 
against calumny persuaded them to risk publicity. 

The course taken was, I repeat, not a course easy for my 
modern readers to understand; we take it for granted in 
the modern world, and especially in England, that a matter 
of this sort, involving, as it were, all the social fabric, is 
best snuffed out. Thus the French Foreign Office were 
willing to destroy the Pannizardi telegram, and rather to 
give a traitor the advantage of concealing damning evidence 
against him than to risk a rupture with Italy. Thus the 
English Home Office allows criminals of a certain stand- 
ing to go free rather than endanger social influences whose 
secrecy is thought necessary to the State; nor do we allov: 



THE DIAMOND NECKLACE 227 

any to know what sums or how large are paid for public 
honours, nor always to what objects secret subscriptions of 
questionable origin — in Egypt, for instance — are devoted. 
Louis XVI. and his wife at this critical moment decided 
otherwise and upon another theory of morals. They decided 
to clear by public trial the honour of the Crown. That 
decision, more than any other act, cost them their thrones. 
It has preserved the truth for history. 



The Feast of the Assumption has for centuries attracted 
the French by its peculiar sanctity. Even during that 
phase of infidelity which, before the Revolution, covered 
all their intellect and still clings to the bulk of their lower 
middle classes, the French maintained it. Even to-day, 
when a fierce anti-Christian Masonry has moulded groups 
of artisans and intellectuals into ardent champions against 
the Faith, the Assumption is universally observed. In the 
Court of Versailles, though now but a ceremony, it was the 
noblest ceremony of the year. 

It was warm noon upon that 15th of August. The 
Court in all its colours stood ranked outside the Chapel 
Royal. The Grand Almoner, the Cardinal de Rohan, 
taller than the prelates and the priests around him, stood 
ready in procession to enter and to celebrate the Pontifical 
High Mass as soon as the King and Queen might appear; 
but the King and Queen, and a minister or two in atten- 
dance, were waiting behind closed doors in Louis' pri- 
vate room. The procession still halted: the Court was 
already impatient: the doors still stood closed. They 
opened; a servant came out and told the Cardinal that the 
King wished to see him a moment. The servant and he 



228 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

went in together, and the doors shut behind the purple of 
Rohan's robes and the lace upon his wrists and shoulders. 

The Court outside grew weary of waiting. A quarter 
of an hour, twenty minutes passed; it was near the half- 
hour when those doors opened again and the Head of 
the King's Household, the Baron de Breteuil, appeared 
with the Cardinal at his side. A lieutenant of the Guard 
happened to be by. Breteuil summoned him and said 
aloud: "The King orders you not to leave the Cardinal 
as you take him to his palace: you are answerable for his 
person." 

So Rohan was arrested, and there is no record who 
sang Mass that day. 



THE NOTABLES 

AUGUST 15, 1785, TO AUGUST 8, 1788 

FOR the Queen the decision to send the Cardinal to 
trial was a final action. The thing was done — 
and, for that matter, nearly done with. 

When she could find time in an interval of her occu- 
pations to write to her brother Joseph — it was not till a 
fortnight later — the whole letter, though it dealt in detail 
with the affair as one deserving a full explanation, was 
written upon a tone of relief. It was tuned, all of it, to one 
key-phrase: "I am delighted to think that we shall never 
hear of this filthy business again." 

Hardly was that decisive act accomplished than there 
suddenly appeared upon twenty points of the horizon, not 
only in frontal advance but upon either flank and in either 
rear of the perilous position she occupied, as many separate 
forces unconnected or but vaguely in touch with one another; 
some directly antagonistic to others, but all having it in 
common that the Queen was their objective, and that the 
trial of the Cardinal had been their signal for mobilisation 
and the march. 

It is in the character of unwisdom to analyse and to pro- 
ceed upon the results of analysis : in the character of wisdom 
to integrate the whole point. The analysis of the situation 
just before the Cardinal's arrest showed clearly one 
great factor of opposition, the Rohan clan. They were 



230 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

everywhere in France contemporary and in France historical; 
they filled Marie Antoinette's generation and a hundred 
years. The sisters, cousins, brothers-in-law were ubiqui- 
tous. Paris was conspicuous with their palaces, the 
Court with their functions, the provinces with their loyal 
dependants or necessary adherents. They were the nucleus 
of the strongest group that remained to the wealthy 
nobility. The Guemenees, the Soubises, even the Condes, 
were one with all the Rohans. A Rohan put to open trial 
would have in that day the effect which a chief of our 
modern financial gang put to open trial might have 
to-day. Imagine one of our judges forced to try a 
Rothschild! 

The Queen saw clearly — it is always easy to see one 
simple thing clearly — that one Rohan force opposed to 
her; she determined to brave it ; but latent, unconscious of 
themselves until her own action called them into being, 
how many other forces were there not! 

There was no member of the higher nobility but to a greater 
or less degree felt vaguely a right to immunity from such 
publicity — and this man was of the highest of the nobility, 
a type. There was no member of the clergy but could 
formulate a clear historical and legal right to the exemption 
of a cleric from the judgment of a lay tribunal — and this 
man was of the highest of the clergy. 

Had he been Archbishop of Toulouse or Sens, or any 
wholly Gallic see even, his case would have been simpler; 
he was Bishop of Strasburg and his metropolitan was 
of Mainz: the Archbishop of Mainz was a conceivable 
opponent. 

He was a prince of the Church : Rome had a right to speak 
— and almost did. 



THE NOTABLES 231 

He was a prince of the Empire: Vienna had a right to 
speak — and almost did. 

Austria and France had for ndw two years been at a strain : 
it was just two years since Joseph had written his first 
serious letter upon the Scheldt to his sister : the government 
of Austria was embittered, and had for sovereign a man who 
would not refuse to trade upon the embarrassment of Ver- 
sailles. The last negotiations for indemnity against the 
opening of the Scheldt were still pending. The moment 
was opportune. 

The Cardinal could be judged by but one tribunal of the"^ 
King's, and that a quasi-governmental body which had for 
a generation stood in increasing opposition to the Crown — 
the Parlement. For them also the moment was opportune. 

He could be tried in but one town, and that town the 
capital, which had now taken up such a definite position of 
hatred against the Queen; in but one part of that town, in 
the Palais, right in the heart of Paris upon which all the 
crowds of that unity so easily converge, and whose towers 
were a perpetual symbol of the Monarchy which had 
deserted its ancient seat for the isolated splendour of / 
Versailles. 

But of much more weight than even these considerable 
and separate bases of resistance was that indefinitely large 
body of smaller and more fluctuating dangers whose integra- 
tion the Queen should have seized if she was to save herself 
from destruction. 

There are in politics, as in physics, conditions of unstable 
equilibrium in which a mass of fragments, seemingly in 
repose, may at a shock be exploded. Their energy lies 
ready to be released by the least disturbance. It is the 
business of statesmanship to remove or to dissolve such as 



232 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

these before large things are undertaken, lest a violent motion 
explode them. A thousand such lay about the palace of 
Versailles, threatening the Queen. Whatever particular 
grudges (even in friends) had had time to grow, the mem- 
ories of hatred in enemies, the last of the Du Barry's faction, 
the last of D'Aiguillon's. The suspicions of the devout 
against her frivolity, the contempt of the philosophical for her 
religion, the irritation of the politician against her presence 
at the Council, the necessary enmity of Calomie — all the 
imperfect and capricious pleasures she had failed to pursue, 
all the losses, dismissals, and humiliations rightly or wrongly 
laid to her charge, were there, not consciously prepared, but 
fatally bound to spring to life if once a body of action against 
her took visible form. That form the trial of the Cardinal 
was to present. When such a body of opposition was in 
motion all would attach themselves to it, each from an aspect 
of its own. All the old dangers, as each appeared, made 
alliance with the new and immediate perils. 

Madame de La Motte was arrested three days after the 
Cardinal, in the early hours of the 18th of August, just back 
at dawn in pomp from a great provincial party in Cham- 
pagne. Her husband fled to London, there to meet a sym- 
pathy readily extended to such exiles, and to keep in touch 
with those centres of enmity against the French Crown and 
religion with which he was familiar. It was on the very day 
when Paris was in the first busy rumour upon the whole 
matter — when it was learned that the Cardinal had been 
allowed to burn half his papers, that La Motte had got 
away, that suspicion was permitted to attach to the Queen — 
it was upon such a day, the 19th of August — that the Queen 
chose to re-open the theatre at Trianon and to re-open it 
with a play of Beaumarchais'. 



THE NOTABLES 233 

Many tragedies in history contain some such coincidences 
but none so many or so exact as those which accompany and 
determine the tragedy of Marie Antoinette. 

Consider the position: the legend of her extravagance 
has rearisen — unjustly. Trianon is — unjustly — the chief 
popular symbol of that extravagance. The theatre of Tria- 
non, the most in view, the most obvious of its expenses, she 
had wisely suppressed during many months. The park at 
St. Cloud, at the gates of Paris, is a further count in the 
indictment against her. Her visit to Paris for her churching 
in May has proved her grievously unpopular: the hated 
financial agreement with Austria in regard to the Scheldt is 
developing, as it is believed (and rightly believed), under her 
guidance. Upon all this comes the thunder-clap of Rohan's 
arrest — and just as men are beginning to comprehend and 
to explain it, just as the public and foreign enmity necessarily 
suggest her complicity, say that "there is more than meets 
the eye," that "you will see, the Queen will make victims of 
them all ; but she is responsible for the purchase of the gems ! " 
Just as the obvious lies were establishing themselves 
through the embryonic press of those days and the cafe 
gossip — in that very Assumption week she chooses to appear 
upon her stage at Trianon, dressed and painted for a part 
written by whom ? By the man Caron — Beaumarchais by 
purchase — whom all the vulgar now associated with the 
most successful attack upon the existing regime, whom 
the older and the higher world remember as the associate 
and perhaps the partner of the Jewish clique in London that 
had published the first dirty lie against Marie Antoinette's 
chastity when she was as yet but a child of eighteen. 

Why was such a folly committed ? The answer to that 
question is all around the reader to-day. That society did 



234 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

not know its doom. It was "chic," it was "the thing" for 
the ruhng powers to read and to see acted criticism upon 
themselves. The little spice of danger — they could think 
it no more — was a piquant addition to jaded and well- 
known pastimes. But the Queen ! How terribly more great 
and more real the living consequences were to be to her than 
to any such abstraction as *'a regime" : she was to see and to 
feel continued physical violence, to be menaced with 
muskets, to be forced from her husband before his death, 
to have her child dragged from her; she was to be wholly 
abandoned, tortured silently by a subterranean silence and 
at last publicly killed. 

To the coincidence of that piece of folly another was soon 
added. All the succeeding month was full of the last negotia- 
tions with Austria: on the 19th of September public dis- 
cussion of the necklace had gone far enough to move her to 
a long letter; she wrote and explained disdainfully to her 
brother — on the 20th was definitely signed the obligation 
on the part of France for half the Dutch indemnity. Austria 
received — for no reason save the Queen's pressure and an 
imaginary relief from war — about a million pounds. With 
the public debt already a matter for debate and about to 
become the critical matter for action, it was a monstrous 
thing. 

Budget for budget — stating the proportions in terms of 
modern revenue — it corresponded to what a payment of 
between ten millions or twelve would be to-day. Stated in 
terms of ease of payment, of ability to pay, it represented far 
more than such a sum would represent in a modern budget 
— and not a penny of that humiliating obligation need have 
been incurred but for the Queen. 

Those historians who regard as beneath discussion the 



THE NOTABLES 235 

great popular cry of the Revolution that Marie Antoinette 
"sent money to Austria" are too ready to neglect whatever 
is rhetorical. Tumbrils of gold did not pass — as the 
populace believed — but this enormous obligation was 
incurred, and incurred through her and in favour of her 
brother. 

That autumn, winter, and spring the necklace was the 
theme. The confused currents of opinion had this in com- 
mon that all accused the Queen, just as, in the great modern 
parallel of the Dreyfus case, the confused currents of 
opinion, differing widely and sometimes in direct opposition 
on vital points, had it all in common that the Catholic Church 
was the real defendant throughout and the real villain of the 
piece. According to some Rohan was the Queen's lover, 
afraid to accuse her or perhaps too fond — but at any rate he 
had purchased the necklace by her orders. According to 
others the La Motte had been the Queen's cat's-paw in trick- 
ing Rohan. According to others again, more extreme, the 
Queen had been herself the actual agent throughout, and 
would now, by an official pressure, procure a verdict 
against her lover and her friend in order to whitewash her 
own character. In general the absurdity which took most 
hold was nearer to the latter theory than to any other: it 
became a test point simply whether Rohan would be ac- 
quitted or condemned. Rohan acquitted, the Queen (by 
some wildly illogical process of general opinion!) was sup- 
posed to be proved guilty of authorship in the whole affair. 
If Rohan was condemned, she was equally guilty of author- 
ship — only, in that case the mob and the foreigner would 
say that wicked judges had proved pliant to Court influence. 

As in the modern trial which I have already quoted as 
the great historic parallel to the trial of Rohan, no evidence 



236 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

could affect the minds of those who had already concluded: 
to make their fixed conclusion fit in with the facts any con- 
tradiction of human psychology and human probabilities 
was admitted. Did some pornographer attack the Queen 
and defend Rohan? Straightway he was a hero! Had 
there been a Pantheon he would have had his burial 
there. Did some anonymous pamphleteer assert his con- 
viction of the Queen's guilt ? Straightway he was an author- 
ity. Did some obscure and needy man take money to sup- 
port the immense power and fortunes of the Rohans against 
the impoverished crown ? Straightway (like those who sup- 
ported Jewish finance in the modern parallel I have quoted) 
he became a being full of self-sacrifice defending the weak 
and the oppressed against haughty power. The document 
whereby the necklace was ordered was signed "Marie An- 
toinette de France,^' — a signature quite impossible in form 
and not even remotely resembling in handwriting that of 
the Queen. No matter. It must be supposed, "for this 
occasion only," that she wrote thus — once at least. Or, if 
that lie was too hard to swallow, then she had had Rohan 
sign thus, or get it signed thus, precisely in order to cover 
her tracks by an improbable signature. Anything at all 
was said and believed — especially in foreign countries — 
provided it implicated the Queen. 

The preliminary stages of the trial were long. Oliva 
was not arrested till late in the winter, at Brussels, fluttering 
and confused; Retaux not till the spring, at Geneva. 

The Queen endured those months of increasing public 
insult and increasing doubt. She was in her fourth preg- 
nancy, and, what was more, her character, to some extent 
her body, had aged somewhat. She had passed that thirtieth 
year which her mother had foreseen to be critical for her; she 



THE NOTABLES 237 

had come to what a superstition or a coincidence made her 
regard as the beginning of bitter years. 

Meanwhile in his room at the Bastille, where he was con- 
fined, the Cardinal held his court, enjoyed his receptions, 
and continued to impress the Parisians with all the pomp 
of his rank. It was not till the end of May that he was 
taken to the Conciergerie — the last step before the public 
trial; he went by night upon the 29th of the month. On 
the next day, the 30th of May, 1786, in the morning, the 
Parlement met in the Grand Salle, the indictments were 
read and the pleadings opened. 

That trial has been described a thousand times. The 
Rohans of every degree were packed at the doors of the court. 
The deference they met with, the immense crowds which, 
during those long two days, awaited the verdict, the anxiety 
at Versailles — all these are the theme of every book that has 
dealt with this best known of historic trials: they need not 
be repeated here. At the close of the proceedings came the 
significant thing: the public prosecutor demanded no more 
than that the Cardinal should apologise for having thought 
the Queen capable of such things, and should resign the 
Grand Almonry — on that small point, the forty-nine judges 
deliberated a whole day long. 

It was dark, it was nine o'clock on the 31st of May when 
their conclusion was announced: some would have con- 
demned him to the mere apology and resignation thus 
demanded, a few to apology but not to resignation, the 
majority were simply for acquittal, and at last, by twenty- 
six votes to twenty-three, Rohan left the court completely 
absolved. For the rest the La Motte was ordered to be 
flogged, branded, and imprisoned at Salpetiere. Her hus- 
band — in contumacy — to the galleys. Retaux to be 



^38 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

transported. As for Oliva, they declared her not to fall 
under the matter they had to try — she was free. 

In Paris the acquittal of the Cardinal (which meant to the 
mob simply the condemnation of the Queen) caused an 
immediate popular outburst of cheering and congratulation. 
They surrounded his palace. They demanded and obtained 
its illumination. He was compelled to show himself and to 
be acclaimed. Then, as must ever be the case with such 
false heroes, he was completely dropped. Those who had 
done most to secure the verdict were most in a position to know 
the perils of further ovation. When the King had stripped 
him of every possible function and emolument and had 
exiled him to the Velay, the Rohans themselves were the most 
assiduous to impose silence upon him and to force him back 
into obscurity. He lived, unnoticed and unremembered, 
remote in Strasburg; was advised, on election to the States- 
General two years later, not to sit; sat, refused the civil 
oath, emigrated, survived the Queen by some ten years, and 
died, doing after that no more evil. 

No public insult could more deeply have wounded the 
Queen than this verdict and that demonstration. Her 
health was touched, but much more her very self was over- 
shadowed as she feared — and she was right — for ever. 
She had not even, as have we, the resource of history. She 
did not know how thoroughly history can deal with these 
Popish plots and Royal Necklaces and Dreyfus Innocencies 
and the rest, nor how contemptuously time and learning 
together expose at last every evil intrigue. She only knew 
— and she was right — that in her time the calumny would 
never be set right. And indeed this one of the great historical 
enthusiasms for falsehood was not set right till our own 
time. Napoleon, musing years after upon the verdict, 



THE NOTABLES 239 

called it, with his broad judgment and his opportunities for 
comparison and knowledge, the beginning of the Revolution, 
the gate of her tomb. Marie Antoinette was of no great 
judgment — she was contemporary to it all; no experience or 
research, but only instinct, could guide her — but some such 
dreadful presentiment of the capital importance of the affair 
stood fast in her mind: in part it greatly ripened her view 
of this bad world; much more it oppressed or broke the 
springs of her spirit, and while there is henceforward in all 
she did new tenacity and much calculation of effort, there is, 
much more, an inner certitude of doom. 

The King went off to Cherbourg where Calonne, still seek- 
ing to re-establish the finances by an extended public 
employment of labour and by display, had achieved the first 
stage of that magnificent artificial harbour, the model of all 
its kind that were to follow in Europe and on the Mediter- 
ranean. Everyw here Louis met with easy but fervid acclam- 
ation. He had never seen the provinces before. He came 
back radiant. The new warmth and zeal, which, under 
another aspect and reacting against other stimuli, were so 
soon to produce the great change, had already touched the 
people, and he had bathed, as it were, in a public energy 
which, till then, cabined in Versailles or wearied by the 
cliques of Paris, he had never known. All that enthusiasm, 
his and his people's, he communicated in many letters to the 
Queen; but she had suffered her blow, and nothing now 
could undeceive her but that fate was coming. Her relation 
the Archduke, the last of so many royal visitors at Versailles, 
had gone. In July her fourth child was born — a girl ; and 
that same summer every stranger that passed through Paris 
noted the beginnings of the storm. The pamphlets were 
awake; the press had risen to a continuous pressure of 



240 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

suggestion, anecdote, and attack, and the necessity for facing 
and solving the violent fiscal problem was no longer a theory 
to be discussed politically but a thing to be done. 

The Court was brilliant in a last leaping flame. Fontaine- 
bleau that autumn was glorious with colours and men; the 
balls at Versailles that winter shone with a peculiar and 
memorable splendour — but it was the end. There were to 
be no more glories : — the last ball had been given, the last 
progress made. 

Calonne, whose French audacity might a little earlier 
have saved the State, dared an experiment which failed — 
but which, from its nature and the things it could but breed, 
led on to the Revolution. He determined (and he persuaded 
the King) to summon, for consultation upon the finances and 
the betterment of the realm, a council of all those who led 
in the nobility, the Church, the Parlements, the Services, 
the great municipalities. This convention was to be named, 
upon the parallel of the last similar summons — now some 
two centuries old — an assembly of "the Notables." The 
Ministry were given the King's decision suddenly, upon the 
29th of December. The Notables were to meet upon that 
day month. More than one critic — especially among the 
aged — foresaw, the dyke once opened, what a flood would 
follow; all, wise or unwise, felt that the meeting would be 
the end of most that they had known and the beginning of 
quite new perils and perhaps new energies or a new world. 

Whether or no the Queen were hurt at a sudden determina- 
tion in which she had taken no part nor even had a voice, 
she very rapidly in the next six months rose to hold the 
Government in her hands: thenceforward to the meeting 
of the States-General and the opening of the Revolution, her 
decision and her vigour take part in all those acts — a dozen 



THE NOTABLES 241 

at the most — which proved ultimately the authors of her 
destruction. 

The Notables met — or rather did not meet — upon the 
day named, the 29th of January, '87. They came to Paris 
on the appointed day, they met in the streets of Paris, in 
drawing-rooms and elsewhere; but those provincial mayors, 
great judges, and members of the high nobility had to wait 
and chafe for many days before they were legally convened. 
Criticism and violence of tongue had time to grow; there 
was a sense of weakness, of anarchy even, in the petty 
details of governmental action following on such delay. 
When they did meet, before their debates had time to 
develop, one event after another was transforming every- 
thing around the Queen. 

The Polignacs had quarrelled with her; Madame de 
Polignac, her life-long friend, had threatened to retire from 
her post with the Children of France. Many — most — 
had followed them ; all whom the Polignacs had benefited, 
through the Queen, for so many years. A last and new 
faction, more intimate, more wounding, more in possession 
of her secrets, and more dangerous than any other was 
thus formed. 

Vergennes was just dead; the King, should Calonne fail 
in the great business of Reform which the Assembly of 
Notables had opened, would be left without a Chief Minister, 
and the Queen's place was plainly ready for her in his 
council-room. 

More than these, the La Motte had escaped from prison, 
and had fled (of course) to London. 

There was not then, as there is to-day, in London a vast 
and organised journalistic system by which news is afforded, 
withheld, or falsified at will. Nay, even had there been such 



242 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

a monopoly, journals had not one-hundredth of the power 
they have to-day. Again, those who governed England then 
were usually well-travelled and were acquainted with the 
French tongue. Again, there existed, what has since failed 
us, strong independent opinion and a cultivated middle class. 
The female La Motte was, therefore, not welcomed with those 
transports of affection or homage which she would receive 
to-day; but there was already suflScient horror at continen- 
tal procedure and sufficient certitude in the baseness of 
all administration of justice abroad to stand her in very 
good stead. The nourishment of the public conscience upon 
the sins of foreigners had already begun. La Motte was 
something of a martyr, and, as she seemed poor, could make 
some livelihood out of the public folly. She began that 
series of pretended "Revelations" which were in some few 
months to be among the principal torments of the Queen. 
Whether (like Esterhazy by our Press in the parallel I have 
already drawn) she was bribed to say such things, we have 
no record. At any rate her publications paid her — for 
a time. 

It has been said that Marie Antoinette helped the La Motte 
to fly from prison. It may be so. When in a great public 
quarrel the innocent side is blundering and unwise, its acts 
of unwisdom are incalculable. Marie Antoinette had 
certainly sent to have the woman visited in prison. It is 
possible that, as she had hoped a public trial could help her, 
so she hoped now the La Motte loose would do less harm 
than the La Motte imprisoned and gagged, with every 
rumour free to circulate. Perhaps she was wholly ignorant 
of the whole matter. Anyhow, the La Motte was loose — 
and the flood of calumny springing from London flowed 
against the Queen and did its work. She, at Versailles, 



THE NOTABLES 243 

grew every day to be more and more absorbed in the crisis 
which was developing with such rapidity — for it was 
already apparent as March proceeded that the experiment 
of the Notables had failed. Calonne had still his native 
courage and his peculiar rapidity of manoeuvre; he fought 
his hand hard — but the opposition was too plain, too large, 
and too strong for him. His plan had been just — he had 
conceived the reformation of lightening the worst taxes 
and of arranging the more equal redistribution of the burden 
upon land — a new redistribution in which no privilege 
should exist of rank or custom — and, more daring, but still, 
in the tradition of Turgot, he had planned an adumbration 
of the Revolution by proposing provincial, local, and par- 
ochial assemblies. 

Two currents of hostility met him : one that the Notables 
in the main stood personally for privilege; the other that 
everyone in France desired more change, and above all, more 
" democratisation " of the centre of the national machinery. 

There was an appetite for debate, for "facts"; a demand 
for exact accounts and public audit and public acceptance 
of taxes. 

These two currents gained their intensity, however, from 
the legend which had gathered round Calonne, as the 
Financier of the Deficit and the Adviser of the Throne. A 
symbolic character, which was never his but which has 
endured almost to our own time, was popularly super- 
imposed upon him, a character of mere frivolity, of mere 
extravagance in time of security, especially of subservience 
to fancied expensive whims of the Queen. 

She, alas ! thought to do a public service and a strong one 
by persuading Louis to the dismissal of his Minister when 
his failure with the Notables was proved. She won. On 



244 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

the 8th of April, 1787, Calon^ie fell, to be exiled, to fly (of 
course) to London, and thence, only too probably, to help 
swell that river of evil speaking and writing which, since 
her thirtieth year, flowed so regularly against the character 
of Marie Antoinette; but which now broke all bounds and 
filled half the pamphlets. 

If in this she acted publicly, decidedly, and to her hurt, 
in her next equally decisive step the Queen acted even more 
publicly, more decisively, and more both to her own hurt and 
that of the alien populace whom she already detested but 
desired, in such a crisis, to rule. After some mention of 
Necker, she forced Lomenie upon the King. 



The writing of history, more than any other liberal occu- 
pation, suffers from routine. I will not detain the reader of 
this chronicle with any long digression upon the effect of 
the French Revolution, upon the nature, the prodigious 
force, and the universality of what may be called, according 
to the taste of the scholar, the Catholic reaction or the 
Catholic renaissance of our day. Still less would I disturb 
the progress of my story with a divagation upon the ease 
with which our academies here fall into every trap set them 
by the enemies of the Faith abroad — whether those enemies 
be random politicians, high stoics, skeptics of a noble 
temper, common usurers, or men fanatical against all re- 
striction of the senses. But I will so far delay the reader at 
this moment as to state plainly a succession of undoubted 
historical and contemporary truths in no particular order, 
and to beg him to reach a conclusion by a comparison of 
them all. 

It is in the routine of our universities to say that Catholi- 



THE NOTABLES 245 

cism was struck to death by two great upheavals ; the Refor- 
mation opened it to attack; the Revolution dealt the mortal 
blow: it is now said to be dying, and especially in France. 
This is the first truth ; that our universities say these things ; 
some regret, some are pleased ; but it is believed and said in 
either camp. Next, it is true that Louis XVI. practised his 
religion and believed in it. Next, it is true that his Queen, 
never wholly abandoning the rule of religion — far from 
it — was now, in 1787, particularly devoted and increas- 
ingly exact in her observance; daily, as she daily suffered, 
more penetrated inwardly by the spirit of the Church. 
A fourth truth is that no single man pretending to high 
intelligence in that generation of Frenchmen believed in 
more than a God: the only quarrel was between those who 
believed in such a Being and those who denied this last of 
dogmas. The fifth truth is, that but yesterday all the 
French hierarchy and all the 80,000 priests of the Church — 
save, perhaps, three — suffered the loss of all corporate 
property and all established income rather than vary in 
one detail from the discipline of Rome. The sixth truth 
is that the prominent and outstanding names of the French 
hierarchy or of the Church's defenders before and during 
this revolutionary crisis were : Rohan, an evil liver, a cheat, 
a fool, and a blackguard; Talleyrand something even lower 
in morals than he was higher in wit; the Archbishop of 
Narbonne — living six hundred miles from his See with 
his own niece for mistress; Gregoire, a full schismatic and 
in his way an honest man; Maury, a vulgar politician, 
like one of our own vulgar politicians to-day, a priest 
out for a fortune, a sort of "Member of Parliament," a 
petty persecutor of the Pope in person and of the Papacy, 
in time a Cardinal — and this man Lomenie. The 



246 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

seventh truth is that Marie Antoinette (who practised her 
religion) ardently supported Lomenie and befriended him, 
and that, therefore, Louis (who was devout) accepted him 
for Chief Minister. 

Read these undoubted truths together and decide whether 
the Faith has advanced or receded in a hundred years. 



Who was Lomenie de Brienne.^ He had had, these 
twenty years, a reputation for what is vaguely called in 
aristocracies '* ability." He had presented the address 
of the Clergy in the Coronation year. He was Arch- 
bishop of Toulouse. He suited La Fayette's idea of 
honesty. He had inordinate passions. He was yet fur- 
ther and later Archbishop of Sens — for the sake of the 
pickings. He had led with no scruple of honour the 
opposition to Calonne in the Notables. Mercy favoured 
him. Vermond, the Queen's old tutor, who owed all to 
him, supported his claim, and Marie Antoinette imposed 
him. But who was he.^^ 

He was an active, careful, and laborious atheist to 
whom the King, by a scruple, refused the See of Paris, 
holding " that the See of Paris is peculiar and had always 
better be held by a man who believed in God." He was a 
wit, he loved wealth inordinately — and that was all. He 
had his reputation with the wealthy, but no action of his 
remains. Such was the hierarchy of that moment, and to 
a circle of such men was power restricted. And Lomenie 
de Brienne was made and put into his seat by the advice 
of Vermond, Marie Antoinette's old tutor, by the advice 
of Joseph XL, a protector of religious doubt; he repaid her 
by a constant devotion. 



THE NOTABLES 247 

It was on May-day, 1787, that this personage was 
put, with an inferior title, at the head of the finances, 
a position which — now more than ever — was neces- 
sarily the chief post in the French State. On the 25th 
the Notables, from whom he came and ^^^hom he had 
led, were dissolved. . . 

Fersen, eager to spend one last day in Versailles, had 
come for a few flying hours. He watched their dissolution 
as a show ... he did not return till the eve of the 
Revolution, and, once returned, he remained a pledged 
sacrifice, a servant, to the end. 

The Notables had done nothing, and Lomenie himself 
proceeded to do much the same; or rather to bring forward 
for the third time as an active proposition — for the mil- 
lionth as a theory propounded — the scheme of financial 
reform which every predecessor had, in one shape or 
another, presented. The destruction of the fossil com- 
partments — walls which separated various antique forms 
of taxation, a larger total tax, a more equitable distribution ; 
the abolition of imposts uselessly vexatory; loans to oil the 
wheels of change. 

The Notables had gone: but to register such decrees a 
power parallel to that of the Throne must — as we saw in 
the case of Turgot — concur. The permanent body of 
legal advisers to the Prince — a conception as old as Rome 
and morally in continuity with the Empire — the body 
which had tried Rohan — the Parlement — pleading the 
absence of a regular budget and of public discussion, 
refused to register, and within three months of Lomenie de 
Brienne's appointment, the Parlement in session had pro- 
ceeded from Sabattier's famous pun» to affirm that no 

1" Vous demandez l'6tat des recettes — ces sont les 6tats generaux qu'il nous faut.'? 



248 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

jyermanent impost could be levied upon the nation without 
the summons and consent of the States-General. 

The reader should pause upon that phrase. 

The conception that All should rule is coeval with society. 

But the words so used by Sabattier were not a mere opinion 
nor a mere reiteration of justice. They were spoken in 
that assembly of lawyers which formed the chief body of 
the State, and once spoken in such an air they were creative. 

This memorable declaration of July, 1787, launched the 
Revolution. 



Nothing can reinvigorate itself or snatch itself from 
decay save by a return upon itself and a recapture of its 
own past. To revive the States-General was to bring back 
to life the vigour of the Middle Ages, and to renew — at 
the close of this last long and glorious but exhausted phase 
in the national life — the permanent energy of Gaul. 

When in the eleventh century the great transition from 
the Dark Ages to mediaeval civilisation was accomplished, 
there came, along with the new Gothic architecture and 
the new national tongues, as the last fruit of that florescence, 
an institution known in each province of Christendom 
by some local name (for the creation was local and spon- 
taneous) but everywhere bearing the same characters, in 
formation, object, and inner nature. This Institution had 
for its purpose the afl&rmation of a doctrine fundamental 
in the Faith, that sovereignty lies and can only lie with the 
community. This Institution had for instrument where- 
with to enforce that right a conception at once as mystical 
and as plain as any that the Faith has admitted or revealed 
in her strict dogmas, the conception of representation: two 



THE NOTABLES 249 

men should speak for thousands; the spirit of a commun- 
ity should enter and be seen through individuals who 
should speak with the voice of districts; these represen- 
tatives should be the very numbers for whom they stood: 
an institution as tangible, as real, as visible as the Sacra- 
ment; as mysterious as the Presence of the Lord. It was 
a miracle of faith, but it conquered; and even to-day, woe- 
fully corrupt, there resides in Representation something of 
majesty and a power in moments of great danger or of 
great national desire to gleam for a moment through the 
dead body of an Institution whose whole principle of 
popular sanctity has been forgotten. 

The theory of Representation sprang, I say, naturally 
from that young and happy time when Europe arose from 
sleep: the century of the Christian reaction against Asia. 

The valleys of the Pyrenees, a scene of continual armed 
endeavours, spurred on by the constant pressure of Islam, 
first organised the idea. 

The cool and cleanly little town of Jaca — an outpost 
on the Roman road into Spain that led down to the fron- 
tiers of the Moors — the little frontier town of Jaca saw 
the first strict gathering of the kind in the very first of the 
Crusades: but Jaca was not alone; it was throughout 
Christendom a natural, a simultaneous growth. The 
southern cities of Gaul, the great provinces, Languedoc, 
Beam, distant and isolated Brittany, the compact England 
of the thirteenth century, followed; lastly, and not till the 
opening of the fourteenth century, a united and majestic 
gathering of Representatives, designed to bring before the 
Crown at Paris the voice, complaint, or will of all its sub- 
jects, emerged. 

These assemblies, a Cortes in Spain, a Parliament in 



250 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

England, were in France called Estates — and that rare one 
which stood, not for one province of Gaul, but for all 
combined, was known as the States-General. Like every 
other institution of its kind it was alive with the mediaeval 
passion for Reality. Not abstract statistics nor some 
crude numerical theory, but the facts of society were 
recognised in, or rather everywhere translated into, these 
representative bodies. There were corps of nobles — 
since the Middle Ages, descending from the Roman centur- 
ies and their rich landed class, had nobles for a reality. 
The priests were separate; the commoners. In some cases 
(notably in towns) special corporations had special dele- 
gates ; in all — especially in the States-General of France 
— the various aspects of the State were present in the 
shape of innumerable statements and mandates enforced 
upon the Representatives (and therefore the servants) of 
clerical and commercial corporations, of territorial units, 
of municipal authorities. 

So long as the high attempt of the Middle Ages was 
maintained so long these councils flourished. That 
attempt bent down and failed in the sixteenth century — 
and with it declined, corrupted, or disappeared the cor- 
porate assemblies which were to the political sincerity of 
the Middle Ages what the universities were to its intel- 
lectual eagerness, the Gothic to its majestic insistence upon 
eternal expression. 

In certain places the advent of the Renaissance in the 
sixteenth century closed the story of representation; in 
others, under the influence of the Reformation, became 
a form. In the two chief centres of the West two varied 
fortunes attached to the two failing branches of that great 
mediaeval scheme. In Protestant England the form of 



THE NOTABLES 251 

Representation survived; in Catholic France the memory. 
By one of those ironies in which History or Providence 
delights, the English oligarchy, which, in the phrase of a 
principal English writer, "had risen upon the ruins of 
Religion," the Howards, the "Cromwells," the Cecils, and 
the rest, maintained the form of The House of "Commons." 
The squires used that organ in the seventeenth century to 
destroy the power of a Crown whose own folly had, through 
the plunder of the Monasteries, led to its own complete 
impoverishment and to the enrichment of the gentry. 
The squires maintained that Crown but kept it as their 
salaried servant, and thus throughout the eighteenth cen- 
tury the fossil of a representative system was in England 
not only cherished but actively cherished to serve us as 
the armour of privilege. Parliament remained intensely 
national, full of sacred ceremonies and forms, and 
still using conveniently to the rich some shadow of 
that theory of national sovereignty which, in breaking 
with the Faith, the nation had broken with, perhaps 
for ever: whether for ever or not our own immediate 
future will show. 

For Europe the strange accident by which dry-bones 
Representation thus survived in England was of vast con- 
sequence. This fossil bridged the gulf between the liv- 
ing Parliaments of the Middle Ages and the advent of 
modern democracy — and by a curious inquiry into the 
archaeology and the extinct functions of English public life, 
Catholic Europe has begun to reconstruct its own past. 
For England the consequences of the survival are known 
to all who have watched the complexion of the Commons 
and type of membership that House enjoys — and the 
strange mode of recruitment of the Lords. 



^5^ MARIE ANTOINETTE 

In France the fortunes of Representation, that medi- 
seval thing, became, from the moment when the Middle 
Ages failed, very different. The States-General stood 
by the side of, and nominally informing, a Roman and 
centralised sovereignty: they were not, like the English 
Parliament, an institution immixed in and at last iden- 
tical with, a wealthy oligarchy; they were an institution 
that stood by the side of and was at last suppressed by a 
national despotism. They ceased abruptly (in 1614), 
but they never lost their soul. Should they hear the call 
to resurrection they could rise whole and quick, a com- 
plete voice of the nation to counsel or to command. In 
July, 1787, with the protestation of the Parlement of Paris 
and its appeal to the past, that call had come, and from 
that moment onward it was plain that all France would 
now soon be found in action. Within two years the thing 
was decided. 



What was the Queen's position those two years ? She 
was in the saddle. Her fulness of life, her firmness of pur- 
pose, had come upon her quickly. She was already divorced 
from joy; she was already, and for the first time, mixed 
constantly with public affairs. It is sometimes written that 
Lomenie de Brienne "gave her a place in the Council." 
That is nonsense. She chose to enter publicly what, in 
private, had been hers since the March of 1787 at the latest; 
what had been partly hers long before. Her strength of 
utterance, her now formative disillusions (for disillusion- 
ment is formative in women), her apparent peril (for peril 
is formative in those who desire to govern) , her recent griev- 
ous humiliation and suffering (for these are formative in all). 



THE NOTABLES 253 

formed her and gave her fixed and constructive power. 
It was most imperfectly, at moments disastrously, used ; but 
if the reader would understand the violent five years which 
follow this moment and culminated in the crash of the throne, 
he must first seize the fact that, though vast impersonal 
forces at issue were melting and recasting France, and 
therefore Europe, the personality nearest the executive 
throughout was that of Marie Antoinette. 

In her room at Versailles met the coming intriguers 
during the struggle with the Parlement under Brienne. 
She it was against whom the dishonoured Orleans, with 
the instinct of a demagogue, intrigued and whispered. She 
it was who spoke of "a necessary rigour" when the fight- 
ing begun ; she — we may presume or be certain — who 
forbade the King to fly in the days of October; she cer- 
tainly upon whom the great effort of Mirabeau turned ; she 
who planned or rather guided the escape to Varennes ; she 
who principally suffered from the recapture; she who con- 
stantly and actively advised Vienna, Mercy, Fersen, Mallet, 
in the perilous months that followed that failure; she who 
sustained the Court after the 20th of June; she against 
whom Paris charged on the 10th of August: hers was that 
power the memory of which exasperated the Revolution and 
drove even its military advisers to useless reprisals, and to 
her death at last. 

I do not say that the powers of that awful time were per- 
sonal or of this world — far from it. Nor do I say that you 
will not find crowded into that little oeon of years a greater 
crowd of high and individual wills than a century may 
count in meaner times — there were a regiment of active, 
organising, and creative minds astir within a mile of Notre 
Dame. Still less do I pretend that the Queen's judgment, 



254 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

her rapidity, her energy, and her certitude were comparable 
to any of a hundred or more in that arena. She was 
nothing compared with their greatest, Uttle compared with 
their least. But I say that close to the executive — to that 
which, until August, '92, could command soldiers, sign 
edicts, and, above all, correspond with foreign Powers — its 
adviser, its constant moderator, at times its very self, was 
the Queen. 

, Her last child, the baby of eleven months, was now in 
the July of 1787, dead. It was the second death of a thing 
loved that she had known — her mother's the first ; it was 
the first death she had seen of a thing loved. In the deser- 
tion of her friends, the great part she had to play, the open 
wound of the necklace verdict, she took that death as but 
one more poignant sorrow. The little girl had been ailing 
for but four days: Marie Antoinette shut herself up with 
her husband and his sister for one day in Trianon to recover 
from that shock. She returned to act. 
I She applauded and sustained her husband — or rather 
Brienne — during the struggle with the Parlement all July. 
She heard (and despised) the call for the States-General. 
When the Lit de Justice, the solemn ceremony by which the 
King could enforce the registration of his edicts in spite of 
the Parlement's refusal, was held on the 6th of August, it 
was held at Versailles, as it were under the Queen's eye: the 
Parlement replied by refusing to admit the registration so 
made. 

• The Parisian crowd surrounded the Parlement in Paris 
and applauded : not for this or that, nor for the nature of the 
taxes protested, nor for anything but for that prime principle 
— that the States-General should be summoned. The 
Queen ordered economies: they came into force at once, 



THE NOTABLES ^55 

that very week. Those who lost their posts became new 
enemies of hers : the economies were nothing to the crowd : 
she gained nothing with the pubUc : she lost more with Ver- 
sailles. It was dangerous for her to approach the Capital. 

If she had hoped, by an economy that seemed to her so 
important, to affect the Parlement, Marie Antoinette was in 
grevious error: in error from that lack of perspective and 
of grip w^hich her position, and above all her character, 
had left in her. Within a week of it all the Parlement had 
replied by a renewed refusal to register, a renewed demand 
for the States-General, and was away at Troyes, exiled but 
sitting in full power, deliberating and enthusiastically sup- 
ported by Paris old and new. At Versailles, Lomenie de 
Brienne, the Queen's man, demanded the title, beyond the 
practical power, of Chief Minister: such a demand led to 
the resignation of what little brains were left in the Council. 
In September he compromised with the Parlement, and let 
it return. 

Lomenie next formulated decrees which proposed indeed 
to rely on ordinary taxation — but to an extraordinary extent 
and on a novel scheme — and to call the States-General 
within five years: he intended (as did the Queen) to adjourn 
and surely to drop the meeting of the States- General alto- 
gether. In November, when a majority in the Parlement 
was secured by the absence of some, perhaps the purchase 
of others, he caused the King to meet that body — and 
then raised its anger again by registering without counting 
votes and, as it were, by the autocratic power of the King. 
If, as is possible, the Queen did not advise or countenance 
this last act, at any rate the whole tone of her correspon- 
dence applauds the decision. 

The consequences following on this error were immediate. 



256 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

Orleans, now the Queen's chief enemy, made himself a 
spokesman of discontent and was exiled to the provinces ; he 
attributed his disgrace to the Queen. Sabattier and Tieteau 
de St. Just were arrested on the bench itself. The States- 
General precisely because it had been proposed to consider 
them "in five years," and because the Parlement had insisted 
on an earlier date, were more in the public mouth than ever; 
and as the year closed, Brienne and all Brienne stood for, 
bethought them of some wide action that should remove all 
this friction and leave government secure. ; 

That action had the Queen for its authoress. It was an 
attempt at despotic reform without representation, an 
Austrian model, and it was named "The New Order." 

No year in Marie Antoinette's life had more affected her 
experience, her character, and her position in the State than 
this of 1787, her thirty-second, which now drew to an end. 
She had made a Ministry ; she had influenced, supported, in 
part created a policy; she had reaped the full harvest of 
pain in the first death of a child, in the growing illness of 
her eldest son, in the flood of calumny which had succeeded 
the La Motte's escape from prison. She had come rapidly 
to actual power, she was exercising it with facility — and 
every act of hers led more nearly and more directly to the 
cataclysm before her. 

The public hatred of her had immensely grown — in inten- 
sity, in volume, but especially in quality, since she had 
manifestly become the chief adviser of her husband and the 
creator of a scheme of government. The Polignacs, as I 
have said, had joined the enemy. Orleans was now defi- 
nitely the head of her bitter opponents. The drawing-rooms 
of Paris had joined the populace against her. It had been 
actually proposed to mock her efl&gy during the rejoicing at 



THE NOTABLES 257 

the return of the Parlement from exile. The wits had 
renewed their nicknames: she was "Madame Deficit" as 
well as "the Austrian" she had always been — and by the 
winter all the quarrel in which the Parlement, the crowd, 
and nearly every permanent force were now ranged against 
the Crown, saw in her the core of the resistance and the 
personal object of attack. 

The year 1788 at its very opening showed clearly how far 
the development had gone. That system of " a new order" 
— a powerful, uncriticised Crown, thorough reform, the 
negation of ideas — saw, risen up against such feminine 
and practical conceptions, those much stronger things, 
dogmas. The civic religion of the French and the creed of 
the era they were framing emerged. Before Easter the 
Parlement had denied the right of the executive to imprison 
at will, as also the right of the Prince to assimilate his edict 
to a public law, and had demanded the complete freedom 
of the three lawyers who had been arrested. But — an 
ominous thing — the Parlement claimed no privileges. It 
demanded the release of its members as citizens and of 
human right against the arbitrary power of the, Crown. 

Against such a force as this — a creed — the only weapon 
that "The New Order" and the Queen could imagine was a 
reform of machinery. In this, as in so much else during the 
furious struggle of those eighteen months, "The New Order" 
fore-planned much that the Revolution itself was to achieve : 
it was modern, it was suited to circumstance, but lackino* 
first principles it was apparent and direct, but lacking 
nationality and being opposed to the summoning of the 
States-General it was doomed. The scheme of "The New 
Order" included a replacing of all this antique, corporate, 
and privileged power of the Parlement by a High Court 



258 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

more fully reflecting the governing classes of the nation. 
It was not unwise, and Marie Antoinette — to judge again 
from her correspondence and from the universal opinion of 
contemporaries — was largely its originator and wholly its 
ally. It miserably failed. 

The secret plan of it — surrounded with fantastic pre- 
cautions — was divulged. The threatened Parlement (and 
it had the whole nation behind it) met at once, and D'Epres- 
menil explained the peril, and declared once more, but far 
more directly than before, for the principles upon which the 
Revolution was to turn, and especially the right of the States- 
General alone — regularly and periodically summoned — to 
grant supply. The arrests that followed — arrests which the 
Queen called with quite singular blindness "acts of rigour" 
— perilous as she saw, but necessary as she imagined — 
were the signal for an approach to civil war. 

"The New Order" was resisted forcibly in the provinces 
by the privileged, by custom, by the populace (who feared 
new taxes) , by local patriotism which feared the loss of local 
character and (what indeed so soon did come) the merging 
of all in one homogeneous State. All the troops were out; 
revolt had begun. 

In June, 1788, the Clergy — summoned to meet and grant 
an aid as a last desperate resource for means — replied by 
an assertion in turn of their immutable custom and peculiar 
right. In July "The New Order" broke down. The de- 
mand for the States-General was acceded to by the Crown 
and by the Queen. On the 8th of August, 1788, they were 
definitely summoned for the May Day of the following year. 



XI 

THE BASTILLE 

AUGUST 8, 1788, TO SEPTEMBER 30. 1789 ; 

THE decision was taken. France was alive with the 
advent of the States-General. The autumn of 
1788 had come. Fersen was with the Queen. 

It was more than fourteen years since, a boy of eighteen, 
Northern, dignified, and grave, his large and steady brown 
eyes had met hers from far off among the hundreds in the 
Masked Ball at the Opera. He w^as then a child. She also 
was a child, pure, exiled, of an active timidity, and not yet 
even Queen. I have written what happened then : the rare 
occasions on which he had come and gone. Now he was 
here with her at Versailles. 

The something permanent which every human life has 
known had entered in that moment of her girlhood and 
settled finally within her heart. The accidents of living did 
little to disturb so silent and so secure a thing. He had been 
but a chance visitor to Paris — a Swedish lad on his Grand 
Tour — when they had thus met for ever; during the critical 
first three years of her reign he had been away in his own 
country. He had returned, as I have said, in the summer 
of 1778. The worst of her torments was settled then: she 
was to be a mother; she might expect an heir to the throne; 
the adventure, the successful adventure, of America had 
begun. A position of womanhood and of rule, such dignities 
and such repose, might have paled or rendered ridiculous 

259 



260 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

the chance passion of extreme youth: they did neither. 
Whether he came or went, his quiet image — the one fixed 
thing she had known in a world she could not know — 
remained. He had been received at once right into the 
tiny inner circle of the Polignacs before he left for the 
American War. He had been with the Queen continually, 
reserved and of that breeding which she longed for, the 
unpassionate poise of the North. Her child, her husband's 
child, was born; '79 and its war news came, and Fersen 
had resolved at last to go. He also by that time, as has 
been read, knew what had entered his life. 

The Queen, as he inhabited the halls of Versailles during 
his farewells, had followed him with her eyes, and very often 
they had filled with tears. All the world saw the thing. 
He had gone off at last to America, to wonder at the swamps 
and the bare landscape, the odd shuffling fighting and the 
drag of an informal war. His English gave him work enough 
interpreting between his own French Generals and Wash- 
ington; he wrote home from time to time to his father, he 
busied himself in learning his military trade — but of Ver- 
sailles or to Versailles there was not a word. During all the 
three years, '80-'83, that he suffered the new countries, the 
Queen and he heard nothing the one of the other. 

He had returned to Europe; but it was only the journey of 
his sovereign Gustavus that kept him some months in 
France, though a colonelcy, more or less honorary, and a 
pension of some hundreds had been given the young man 
there. A wealthy marriage, long arranged in England for 
him, he let slip without concern. The proposal (a year 
before the affair of the necklace) that he should marry 
Necker's ugly daughter, he resigned at once in favour of his 
friend, young Stael, his sovereign's ambassador. With a^ 

f 



THE BASTILLE 261 

commission in Sweden as well as in France, it was his own 
country he preferred. His moments at Versailles were rare, 
his visits very brief — such as that in which he saw the Not- 
ables dissolved (of which scene he records his judgment) ; in 
none did he more than appear, silent, for a very few hours 
or days at Versailles. The girl who had met him, a boy, in 
'74, was now a woman of thirty and more: chance glimpses 
alone had lit up the very long space of those years : she had 
suffered all the business of the necklace, all the rising hatred 
of Paris, without any too close a word from him; she was 
entering the Revolution and the way to death when he 
reappeared: henceforward he did not leave her. 

That bond, which time had neither increased nor dimin- 
ished and which permanent absence and silence had left 
unfalsified, now became a living communion between them. 
He was never what is called her "lover " ; the whole sequence 
is that of a devotion as in a tale or a song, and yet burning 
in living beings: a thing to the French incomprehensible, 
to men of other countries, to Englishmen, for instance, 
comprehensible enough — but, whether comprehensible or 
not, as rare as epic genius. 



Brienne had fallen: the Queen, and the Queen alone, 
had put back Necker in his place. Why had she done this ? 
From a desire to rule, and an opportunity for it. 

There are those who discover in themselves the capacity 
to govern, that is to organise the wills of men. Often great 
soldiers find this in themselves, and are led to govern a 
whole state at last: such as Napoleon. 

There are others to whom cheating, intrigue and cunning 
are native: such are, at bottom, however high their station, 



262 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

the slaves, not the dictators or the helpers, of their fellow- 
beings; they have a keen nose for the herd; they will always 
follow it, and it is their ambition to fill posts where they can 
give favours and draw large salaries. Of this sort are par- 
liamentary politicians to-day: from such we draw our 
ministers. They have of poor human nature an expert 
knowledge such as usurers have and panderers; they are, 
therefore, not unsuited to choose permanent officials or to 
recommend to others places of trust and power. 

There is a third kind, and to this third kind Marie Antoi- 
nette belonged — as many another woman and feminine man 
has belonged. It neither organises nor intrigues; it desires 
to do neither, and is incapable of both. All it desires is to 
be able to say " I govern." The accident of the last two years 
had permitted her to say this — but, having said it, she could 
say nothing more. She knew the outcry against Calonne: 
she undid him. She knew the reputation of Brienne: she 
made him. She saw Brienne most evidently out of favour 
with opinion; she unmade him. She heard shouts for 
Necker — and Necker was summoned to her little room, was 
regally examined, graciously received and installed. 

Those who can govern through a period of peril, that is, 
those who can organise the wills of men during the short and 
indeterminate time before any resultant of clashing social 
forces has yet appeared, note, decide, order, speak, and do 
— and when it is too late to act, their genius tells them that 
it is too late. In the early winter of 1788 it was not yet 
too late. What would one possessed of the power of govern- 
ment have done? In the first place, such an one would 
have stated the evil publicly in detail and with authority; 
in the next, chosen not one but a body of men to deal with 
particular difficulties (as, for instance, a particular legiste 



THE BASTILLE 263 

for the troubles of that absurdity, the Common Law; a par- 
ticular soldier to suggest a reform of the army, &c.; in the 
third, used as allies all the positive forces available, all the 
enthusiasms, all the tide — to this force (by persuasion) how 
much may not be harnessed? So Mirabeau would have 
done; so Napoleon did; so some ready eye in 1788 might 
have planned. The States-General is the fever ? You shall 
have it: in Paris, with splendour. The Commons are the 
cry ? They shall be in full double number and with special 
new powers — a new dress, perhaps, as well. The nation 
is crying out for Government ? Give them the Crown : the 
King on horseback day after day. 

Had some such judgment controlled that moment, France 
would have preserved the Monarchy, old institutions clothed 
in their old names would have been squeezed and fitted into 
new moulds; France so changing, there would have been 
some change in Europe — an episode well worthy of memory 
and noted by special historians. The Bishops of the Church 
in France would — to-day — have been what Rohan and 
Narbonne were then; the Faith, already derelict, would by 
this time very probably have descended to be a ritual for 
wealthy women or an opinion for a few valueless, weak men: 
that self-praise and that divorce from reality which is the 
mark of our backwaters in Europe and of our new countries 
everywhere would (perhaps) have settled in the succeeding 
century upon all Europe, and, for the first time in its long 
history, our civilisation would have missed one of its due 
resurrections. As it was, God intended the Revolution. 
Therefore, every error and insufficiency in those directing 
its inception was permitted, and therefore, on account of 
such insufficiency, the full force of a military people ran 
freely, as run natural things, and achieved what we know. 



264 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

The Queen had nominated Necker from a mere desire to 
rule, and had therefore simply chosen the man most loudly 
called for. Necker, on his side, was well worthy of so facile 
a judgment; he was all that is meant by Geneva. 

By his own standards, which were those of a company 
promoter, he was just barely honest — by those of chivalric 
honour he was deplorably tainted. Full of avarice, order and 
caution, a very Huguenot, he sought everywhere an eco- 
nomic solution for political problems ; unsoldierly, of course, 
and in the presence of danger worthless, he was none the 
less patient in detail and of a persevering^ind ; very vacil- 
lating in the presence of fierce and conflicting desires around 
him, he was yet tenacious of a general plan. To all these 
characters he added that kind of ambition which is avid of 
popularity on condition that it shall face no bodily risk and 
that it shall labour in words or on paper only. He had his 
reward: his insignificant figure was for a year the symbol 
of all the great ferment ; his presence with, or absence from, 
the Council was the test of advance or of retreat in the 
revolutionary movement. So for one year — then for a few 
months he is forgotten; then he hears a mob in the street, 
and flies. 

With such a man as figurehead it is not difficult to judge 
the obvious development of the autumn and winter which 
produced the first great Parliament. Opinion was invited : 
the pamphlets poured in. On matters already fixed in public j 
opinion Necker could be decisive, as, for instance, that 
the Commons in the approaching Assembly should be as 
numerous as the clergy and the nobles combined — for this 
was the universal rule in provincial parliaments; but when 
(two days after Christmas) this point (which had afforded 
food for violent writing but was in reality certain to be 



m 



THE BASTILLE 265 

conceded) — when, I say, this point was fixed by King 
and Queen and Council, Necker so drafted the decision as 
to make it appear all his own to the populace: while at 
Court the angry higher nobility said it was all the Queen's. 
A far more decisive matter — and one that escaped the parti- 
sans — was whether the Nobles, Clergy, and Commons 
should sit and vote together, as the necessity for a Popular 
Will — for one voice — demanded, or should play the 
antique fool and, in a crisis so actual and vivid, solemnly 
vote separately, checking each other's decisions, nullifying 
the public mandate — all for the sake of custom. Here 
Necker could have decided and changed history : but there 
was not an opinion sufficiently unanimous to guide him in 
his nullity. He left that essential piece of procedure to be 
settled by the Estates themselves when they should have 
met ; he thus (as will be seen) made of the first and most 
necessary act of the States-General, the insistence of the 
Commons that all should vote together, an illegal thing — 
and so coloured all their succeeding action with the colour of 
rebellion. One thing Necker had done of his own judg- 
ment, and it was idiotic. He had summoned the Notables 
again for a month in the autumn — he was soon glad to be 
rid of that folly : the decree I have mentioned followed, and 
in February, 1789 — legally before the end of January — 
the elections to the States-General began. 

No such complete representation of a great nation has 
been attempted since that day ; no such experiment could be 
attempted save with political energy at white heat and under 
the urgent necessity of a secular charge. The confused noise 
which filled the rising spring of '89 was, for once, the voice of 
all; thousands upon thousands of little primary assemblies, 
of advisory letters, of plaints, of legal suggestions, of strict 



^66 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

orders and mandates to the elected (without which no politi- 
cal freedom can exist) of corporate actions by guilds, by 
townships, by chapters, by every form of political personality, 
filled and augmented the life of France. So vast was the 
thing that to this day, amid the libraries of monographs that 
seem to exhaust the Revolution, all have shrunk from the 
delineation of this rising ocean of men. There is no final 
work upon the elections of '89. No one has dared. 

April passed. The deputies began to stream into Paris. 
Paris, the last days of that month and the first of the next, 
began to overflow into the royal town at its gates. Sunday, 
the 3rd of May, saw one long procession of every kind and 
fortune pouring, in spite of the drenching weather, from the 
capital up into the hills of Versailles. Upon the morrow 
the opening religious ceremony of the Session was to be held. 



At about six o'clock of the morning of Monday, the 4th 
of May, it was still raining — not violently, but still raining; 
the dawn struggled in wet clouds over the woods and the 
plain of Paris beyond, and the pavements of Versailles were 
shining flat under the new day, with large puddles in their 
worn places. As the light broadened the rain ceased. The 
uniform and dull low sky began to break and gather: the 
innumerable crowd moved. Some thousands were sodden 
after a night spent out of doors; many thousands more, 
moving from their packed rooms, where a bed was a guinea 
and the mere shelter of a roof a well-let thing, began to 
crowd the pavements, the roofs, the cornices; as for the 
windows, every window had its bouquet of heads at high 
price, well-dressed heads and eager. The morning rose 
and grew warm. 



THE BASTILLE 267 

The palace of Versailles looks east and north down towards 
the woods that hide Paris; it looks down three broad, 
divergent avenues spreading like the fingers of a hand, and 
starting (as from the palm of such a hand) from a wide space 
called the "Place d'Armes," which forms a huger outer 
court, as it were, to the huge Court of the Kings. To the 
right and to the left of this main square and its avenues, as 
you look from the palace, lie the two halves of the town: 
the northern, to the left, has for its principal church Notre 
Dame; the southern, to the right, has for its principal church 
St. Louis, which is now the Cathedral; each building is by 
situation and plan the centre of its quarter. The way from 
Notre Dame to St. Louis is up the Rue Dauphin, across the 
great Place d'Armes and then down the Rue Saborg — all in 
a straight line not half a mile long, with the great Place tak- 
ing up more than the middle third. From the one church 
to the other was the processional way of Versailles; it was 
chosen for that day. From seven onwards the Parlement 
had been gathering in Notre Dame ; not till ten did the royal 
carriages arrive, all plumed and gilded, swung low and 
ridiculous : the King and his household, the Queen and hers; 
the Princes of the Blood — but as for Orleans he was already 
with the lords in the Church, disdaining his rank and 
making a show of humility. They all set out in procession 
for St. Louis, the clergy of Versailles in a small surpliced 
body leading, the dark Commons next, the embroidered and 
feathered Nobility, the Priests, the Household, the music, 
the Bishop; then the Blessed Sacrament in the Archbishop 
of Paris' hands, with Monsieur and his brother and two 
more of the Blood at the corners of the canopy; last of all 
the Queen and her ladies — all in the order I have named; 
two thousand and more four-front, the length of a brigade — 



268 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

and every one of them (save the Archbishop who held the 
Monstrance) with a blessed candle in his or her hand. By 
the time the head of the line was at St. Louis, the tail had 
hardly left Notre Dame/ and as each detachment took the 
line, young Dreux Breze, Master of Ceremonies, on foot 
since seven, ordered them. 

The myriads of people saw them go by. The sun was 
shining at last : all could be seen, yet the cheers were pointed 
and full of meaning; the silence also was full of meaning. 
They cheered the Commons as those six hundred went by, 
in black without swords — all in black save for a Breton 
amongst them. Some curiously picked out Mirabeau; they 
were silent at the lords' blaze of colour, half-cheering only 
Orleans, his face such a picture! the sacred candle flickering 
in his hands; they did not (as would a modern crowd) all 
uncover to the Blessed Sacrament; they cheered the King. 
Then, as the Queen passed, there passed with her a belt of 
silence. As she went slowly with her ladies along that way 
silence went with her; cheering went before and after. 
At one place only was that silence broken, where a group of 
rough women suddenly shouted out, as she passed, insulting 
vivats for Orleans: it may be that she stumbled when she 
heard them. 

From the advanced colonnade of the great stables 
(where the sappers are lodged to-day), upon the roof 
of the colonnade, there was a truckle-bed and many 
cushions laid, and on it was lying the broken body of 
her son, the Dauphin, who would not inherit all these 
things: he was very visibly dying. His miserable little 
frame, all bent and careless, lay there at its poor ease. 

His li stless and veiled eyes watched the procession go by. 

' Carlyle, of course, puts one church for the other, and makes the procession walk wrong way about. The 
Cambridge History, however, is accurate in this detail. 



THE BASTILLE 2G9 

It is said that his mother, in that half-mile of ordeal, 
glanced up to where he lay, and smiled. 

The sun still shone upon the double row of soldiers — the 
blue of the Gardes Fran9aises upon this side, the Red of 
the Swiss upon that; the crowd was in gaiety — the 
wet were now dry; the last of the line were now gone 
and the doors of St. Louis had closed on them. It had 
been a great show, and all the place and its pleasures 
were open to the people. Next day the Session was 
opened in that same hall which had been raised two years 
before for the Notables. 

A member of the Commons, sitting in the back row of his 
order, would have seen before him, rank upon rank, the 
dense mass of black uniform menace which his six hundred 
presented, half filling the floor of the great oblong hall; 
to left of him, against a row of columns, the clergy of every 
rank; to the right against the opposite row of columns, 
the blaze of the Nobles — among them Orleans, his face 
insolently set towards the Throne. Far above and beyond 
them all, at the end of the hall, like an altar raised upon its 
steps, was the last splendour of the Throne. The golden 
threads of the lilies shone upon the vast canopy of purple 
velvet that over-shadowed it; seated upon it, alone above his 
kingdom, the last of the kings possessed a great majesty, 
in which the known hesitation of his gait, the known lethargic 
character of his person, were swallowed up in awe: an 
enormous diamond gleamed in the feather of his hat. Below 
and around him were grouped the Princes of the Blood and 
the great officers of State, and in front of the group in a 
long line sat the Ministry. Necker among these — the only 
one dressed as the Commons were dressed — appealed to 
the Commons, while at the fooj of the throne, in purple and 



276 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

silver white, a little diamond circlet and a heron's feather 
in her hair, stood the Queen. 

This the Commons could see, under the light that fell 
from high windows near the roof; it fell over two thousand 
of the public — guests chosen rather than a true public; 
they filled the galleries above, they swarmed in the dark 
aisle beneath, undivided from the three orders — a famili- 
arity shocking to our historians who, craning their necks, 
have watched as a privilege and with respect the fag-end of 
the House of Commons or the County Council from a pen. 

To the command of Dreux Breze, all that great hall rose: 
the King rose also, read his short speech in a firm voice, 
and put on his hat to sit down. The Nobles covered 
themselves at the King's gesture: among the Commons 
there was confusion — they did not know the etiquette, or 
rather, some did, some did not. The incident was insigni- 
ficant and comic: a graver thing followed it. Barentin rose, 
the Keeper of the Seals; he spoke for an hour. Had he 
spoken for three minutes and spoken but one sentence it 
would have been all he had to do, for he was there to tell 
them that it was left to the Three Orders to sit separate or 
together as they might choose. All the Revolution was latent 
in that order. 

The Nobles would vote to sit separate; possibly the clergy : 
the "National Assembly" — as all thought of it, as all called 
it — would be turned into a "Lords and Commons" — an 
absurd, complicated and do-nothing machine with privileges 
and customs, quaintnesses and long accommodations be- 
tween this house and that; it would lose touch with the 
general; the sap of national life would be cut off from it; 
it would not be able to create; it would be the jest of that 
which really governed. As in England to-day our various 



THE BASTILLE 271 

elected bodies are the jests of the plutocracy, so in 1789 the 
"National Asserably," tripartite, played upon by vanity and 
ignorance, would have become the jest of the Crown. But 
in France an institution, once unreal, disappears, and before 
July the Assembly was, according to this plan, to disappear. 
It was deliberately conceived as a means of nullifying and 
destroying the Parlement. 

Necker spoke next. He spoke for three hours, and was 
listened to throughout, for he dealt with finance. His 
speech was full of lies — but his name had not yet lost the 
titular place of idolatry. When he had ended his Genevese 
falsehoods, the ceremony was over and all were free to dine. ' 
But with Barentin's words the Revolution had begun. 

All May Gaul worked and seethed. The instinct of 
numbers aimed straight for the objective upon which all 
turned, and the Commons demanded the accession to one 
corporate Assembly of the Nobles and Clergy. They nego- 
tiated with the privileged houses ; they affirmed the principle 
of combined voting: Necker sent for soldiers. By the end 
of the month the last attempt at some voluntary arrange- 
ment had failed. Meanwhile the King, by some lethargy or 
through the intrigue of some cabal, had not yet formally 
received a deputation of the Commons. 

What did the Queen make of that May ? The days seemed 
to her first an ugly rumour throughout Versailles, buzzing 
round the palace — soon an uproar. She stood with the few 
that actively maintained privilege against the Commons; 
but, a trifle wiser than they, she brought in their counsels 
in a moderate form to the Kino;. It was not enouo-h: the 
troops still came into Paris — Gaul still rose higher and 
higher; and through the tumult something much more to 
her, more intimate, infinitely more acute and true, ran and 



272 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

held her as a physical pain will pin the mind and hold it dur- 
ing the playing of some loud and meaningless music: it 
was the dying of her little son; he lay at Meudon dying. 

The end of the French Monarchy was mirrored in the 
fate of the last bodily forms that were to contain its Idea. 
The Bourbon heirs, one after another, died before succession. 
Louis XV., a great grandson, himself delicate from birth, was 
succeeded by a grandson again, a boy painfully saved by the 
doctors - — a man throughout life partially infirm. The 
line had come at last to this child, the Dauphin, whose 
advent had been the opportunity for such strong joy through- 
out the country and in whom the New Age was to find its 
first King. All the phases of doom had shown themselves: 
first, the high promise, then the vague doubts, the mysteries 
of a general disease; lastly the despairs. For a month, ever 
since the opening of the States-General, which he had lan- 
guidly witnessed, it had been but a question of the day on 
which the boy would die. That day had come. 

It was on the 3rd of June, at Meudon. The King and 
the Queen had come in answer to sudden and graver news 
of their child; they reached the place in the early afternoon 
— and they were implored to return. The boy was within, 
at his agony. The King sank into a chair and cried that his 
son was dead, and the poor lad's mother, suddenly broken 
in the midst of so many and such great public alarms, of 
her government, her resistance and her perils, suddenly knelt, 
down and cried wildly, rocking her head in her hands, bury- 
ing her face on Louis' knees: she called out to God. They 
were left thus together, and at one the next morning the 
Dauphin was dead. 

It was as though two majesties or angels challenged each 
other in those days: the majesty which reigns inwardly and 



THE BASTILLE 273 

which everywhere makes of a son's death the supreme 
agony of the world, though sons die hourly; the majesty 
which reigns outwardly and which commands, once in a 
thousand years, the passing of societies and kingdoms. For 
while this death was doing at Meudon, in the Commonwealth 
the last decisions also were at hand. Two days after the 
sad procession of ranks and delegates had done honour to 
the dead child, the Commons summoned for the last time 
the Clergy and the Lords to join them and form one body 
to mirror the nation. It was but three days after the little 
body had been taken to lie at St. Denis among the Kings, 
that the next step was taken. The Revolution broke with 
law — it now first began to be the Revolution and to do. 
The Commons declared themselves to be no longer the 
"Commons," but — with all of the privileged orders who 
would join them — they declared themselves to be the 
''National Assembly": those who would not join them 
were no part of the body which was to remake the world: 
their legality was not to avail them: the Commons had 
"made act of sovereignty," and the strain between two 
centres of authority, the Crown and the Representatives 
had begun. 

It was this that the Queen must watch and parry and 
try to understand, now, when the first part of her flesh had 
gone down into the grave, and her brain, shaken with 
despairs, must attempt to control and to comprehend the 
wave; and her eyes, weary of weeping, to read orders, to note 
faces, and her voice, with which she could not longer call 
her son, to command. She was in the centre of the resist- 
ance for a month, and it failed. 

For a few days, in spite of the call for troops which had 
been heard — and the troops were coming — for a few days 



274 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

more, speech was still formidable and every phase of the 
debate ringing through the great shed of the Menus was a 
further affirmation of the new and violent sovereignty of 
those usurpers, the Assembly. In twenty-four hours a 
decision was taken by the Crown. 

To the assumption of sovereignty by the Commons the 
Court replied. There was to be a Royal Session on the 
Monday following, the King present, and all the division 
between the orders settled by his final voice — as to the 
Commons declaration it was ignored. 

And meanwhile Speech was silenced. Barentin, Keeper 
of the Seals, had seen to that. He wrote to the King that 
it was imperative the Commons should be silenced until the 
Royal Session was held. He wrote : "Coupez Court." 
Have done with the business ! A simple way to silence the 
Commons was found. 

It was upon Friday the 19th of June that Barentin had 
written his letter to the King. Upon the Saturday mor- 
ning, the 20th, the weather having turned to rain and 
the streets being deserted, the first stray members of 
the Commons came up to the door of the Menus to 
resume their debates. No notice had reached them, nor 
even their elected Speaker, Bailly, the worthy astronomer. 
They came with umbrellas dripping above them, the mud 
splashing their black stockings and black knee breeches, the 
rain driving in upon their black Court coats. They tried the 
door: it was locked, and a sentry came forward. They saw, 
streaked under the rain, a little scrap of writing nailed to the 
door. The Hall was "closed by royal order," and, within, 
the sound of hammering marked the carpenters at work 
preparing for Monday's ceremonial. They wondered: 
others came; the group grew until at last many hundreds of 



THE BASTILLE 275 

the Commons stood there without, upon the pavement of 
the wide planted avenue. Mirabeau was there and Robes- 
pierre was there, Sieyes, Bailly — all the Commons. Up at 
the end of the way the King's great Palace lay silent and, as 
it were, empty under the rain. No one crossed its vast open 
courtyard; its shut streaming windows stared dully at the 
town. The Commons moved away in a herd, leaving the 
sentry and his comrade to pace and be drenched, and the 
little scrap of writing to be washed and blurred on the 
locked door. As they moved off the noise of hammering 
within grew fainter till they heard it no more. 

That very middle-class sight, a great mob of umbrellas 
wandering in the streets, was full of will: wandering from 
one place to another they landed at last in a tennis court 
which was free, just where a narrow side-street of the south- 
ern town makes an elbow. Into that shelter they poured: 
and over against them, watching all they did from above, 
from his home just across the lane, w^as Barentin, Keeper 
of the Seals. He saw the umbrellas folded at the door, the 
hundreds pressing in, damply; he saw through the lights of 
the court their damp foot-prints on the concrete of the hall — 
a table brought: Bailly, the president, standing upon it 
above the throng and reading out the oath that they 
" would not disperse till they had given the nation a 
constitutioii' — then the press of men signing that declar- 
ation one by one. 

He heard the mob gathering outside and filling the street. 
Among them at least one witness has left a record of what 
could be heard through the open doors — how Mirabeau 
reluctantly signed, pleading popular pressure; how one man 
only refused to sign, thinking it what it was, rebellion. He 
was Martin, of Auch. 



276 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

It was the summer solstice, a date unlucky to the 
Bourbons. 

The King heard all these things — but there was nothing 
to be done. Sunday passed, and Monday — the Royal 
Session was postponed. It was not till Tuesday morning, 
the 23rd, at ten that the procession formed and that Louis 
prepared to attend it. It was still raining. 

All the pomp that could be gathered had been gathered 
for that occasion, though the very skies were against it. 
Four thousand men stood to arms, lining that less than half 
a mile from the Palace to the Menus. Hidden in the woods 
beyond, camped up on Satory and dispersed in the suburbs 
around, six regiments more were ready. A vast crowd, 
wholly silent, watched the Court go by. The Queeh un- 
broken (but carrying such recent agony!), Artois vivacious 
and trim, the Ministers hurried, Louis somewhat bent, 
fat, suffering. 

A man who saw that sight has written that he thought to 
see some great funeral go by: he was right. Of the two 
million dead which the Revolution demanded from Moscow 
to the Tagus, the first was passing in the splendid coach of 
the Kings — I mean. Unquestioned Security. That fixity | 
of political creed and that certitude in social structure, which 
hitherto no wars had shaken in Europe for century upon 
century of Christian order, had perished. Men cannot live 
or breathe without political security, yet for now more than a 
hundred years Europe has in vain awaited its return. 

The King had reached his throne in the great shed of the 
Menus; the Queen was beside him; the Orders, the Nobles | 
and the Clergy stood ranked on either side ; then after some 
delay the Commons were permitted to enter by a mean side- I 
door and to fill the dark end of the place with their dark 



THE BASTILLE 277 

numbers. . . . Where was Necker? The Symbol of 
the New Age was not there ; the fatuous Genevese had stayed 
at home. He had presided at the Council which had 
drawn up the declaration the King was about to read. He 
7)iay have suggested certain softenings of phrase in it; they 
may have been rejected by the Queen or another — ^but it 
was a document the responsibility of which he, in duty, 
bore; it was for him to resign or to be present: he hedged 
by his absence and let it be thought that he protested. 

With a rumble and a shuffling the twelve hundred of them 
sat down. When they were all well sat down, Barentin 
in a loud voice proclaimed: "Gentlemen, the King gives 
you leave to be seated!" The King turned to the Queen 
upon his left and bade her also take her throne. She cour- 
tesied with an exaggerated grandeur and chose to stand 
while the whole long speech was delivered — a royal witness to 
the Crown of which she was now much more the strength and 
principle than any other there. 

The speech was decisive. It willed this and that in strong 
imperatives — even the voice of the King, into whose mouth 
these words were put, was firm: he willed very liberal and 
modern things — but no divided authority — above all, no 
divided authority! The new and rival sovereign, the 
Usurper, must resign. The Commons were but the Com- 
mons. Of their recent claim no word, but, upon the 
contrary, an assertion that the States-General might not, 
even were they to vote in common, determine their own 
procedure. 

As he read, here and there a man would applaud — even 
from among the Commons. 

"Remember, gentlemen, that none of your plans, none of 
your schemes can become law without my express approval. 



278 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

It is I that have, till now, given my subjects all their 
happiness. ... " And the speech closed with: "I 
command you, therefore, gentlemen, to disperse at once. 
To-morrow you shall come each into the Hall assigned 
to his order." 

When he had read these words the King sat down: the 
speech was ended. There was but a moment between his 
ending and his rising again to go. The Queen, very digni- 
fied, rose with him. Together, and followed by their train, 
they left the hall. It was just noon. 

The Nobles rose in their turn and left the building: the 
Bishops preceded them, but of the lower clergy many — 
half, perhaps — lingered. The body of the Commons 
refused to move. 

They sat massed, in silence, at the far end of the great 
gaudy shed. Over against them, at the further end, the 
workmen had begun to take down the scenery of that royal 
play; the curtains were being lowered, the carpets rolled up, 
and there was hammering again. Across the empty benches 
of the nobles and the Hierarchy, in the empty middle of the 
hall, every exclamation, however subdued, of the bewildered 
but determined Commons echoed: but the background of 
that interval was astonishment and silence. 

This curious and dire silence, a silence of revolt, lasted 
perhaps half an hour, when there entered into it the Master 
of the Ceremonies, young Dreux Breze. 

He was little more than a boy, just married, of a refined 
and rather whitened sort, tall, covered with cloth of gold. 
He was not ashamed to stud his hands with diamonds, like 
an Oriental or a woman; he shone with light against the 
dark mass of the Commons, and he alone wore a sword. He 
bore no sign or sacred letter, and his mere office was not 



THE BASTILLE 279 

awful.* He advanced, and in that slightly irritable but 
well-bred drawl of his he muttered something as though 
ashamed. They cried "Speak up!" He spoke louder. 
"They had heard the King's orders. ..." He 
repeated the phrase. Various cries and exclamations 
arose. Then Mirabeau, standing forward, said — What 
did he say.'^ It is uncertain, and will always be debated, 
but it was something like this: "We are here by the will of 
the people and only death can dismiss us." Dreux Breze 
walked out with due ceremony, backward. 



Well, then, why was Death not brought in to sweep the 
Commons ? Here were soldiers all around — foreigners, 
Germans, and Swiss, in number a full division: why was no 
shot fired ? Because, although apparently no force lay 
opposed to them save the mere will of less than a thousand 
unarmed debaters, there did in fact lie opposed to them the 
potential force of Paris. Close on a million souls, say two 
hundred thousand men capable of bearing arms, almost 
homogeneous in opinion, lay twelve miles down the valley, 
as full of rumour as a hive — at the sound of a musket they 
might rise and swarm. It was not a calculable thing; Paris 
might after half an hour of scuffle turn into a mere scat- 
tered crowd : there might be a fierce resistance, prolonged, 
bleeding authority to death unless a sufficient force con- 
tained Paris also, as the debaters at Versailles were already 
contained. That force was summoned. 

Thirty regiments moved. All the last days of June the 
great roads sounded with their marching from every neigh- 
bouring garrison. The rattle of new guns one morning 

' It had originally been created to provide a salary for one, Pot, who was further dignified with the title of 
Rhodes — names curiously English. 



280 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

woke from sleep the unknown Robespierre, who watched 
them from his window passing interminably under the July 
dawn; they baited their horses in the stables of the Queen. 
Of nearly all the troop so gathering one little portion, the 
half -irregular militia body (militia, but permanently armed) 
called "the French Guards," was other than foreign. The 
"French Guards" might not indeed be reliable but, as it 
was thought, they hardly counted. The rest were for the 
most part German-speaking mercenaries, the solid weapon 
of the Crown: and still they gathered. 

Neck to neck with the advance of that mobilisation the 
Assembly raced for power; for every brigade appearing you 
may count a new claim. In the first hours of their revolt, 
when Dreux Breze had just retired, they proclaimed them- 
selves "Inviolable" — that is, in their new sovereignty, 
they declared an armed offence to that sovereignty to 
be treason. 

The sight of Paris, heaving as for movement on the 24th 
of June, Wednesday, when the news of the royal session 
and its sequel came, determined the Duke of Orleans to 
take a line. He desired to profit by the dissensions. He 
continually bribed and flattered and supported, by his wealth 
and through his parasites, the vast and spontaneous surge of 
opinion, adding perhaps a fraction to its power. He was 
among the stupidest of the Bourbons, for he thought in his 
heart he might be king. This null and dissipated fellow 
led a minority of the Nobles to the Commons and declared 
their adhesion to the Assembly: that was the Thursday, 
the 25th — the next day the Court itself, the King, deliber- 
ately advised the union of all the orders! 

The Court had yielded — for the moment. The Court 
thought it was better so: the troops were gathering, soon 



THE BASTILLE 281 

a blow was to be struck, and the less friction the better while 
it was preparing. . . . 

So, as the first week of July went by, everything was 
preparing : the Electorial College of Paris had met and con- 
tinued in session, forming spontaneously a local executive 
for the capital: certain of the French Guard in Paris had 
sworn to obey the Assembly only, had been imprisoned 
. . . and released by popular force . . . and par- 
doned. The last troops had come in; the Assembly was 
finally formed. On the day when it named its first com- 
mittee to discuss the new Constitution, the Queen and those 
about the Queen had completed their plan, and the Crown 
was ready to re-arise and to scatter its enemies. 

There was in this crisis a military sim.plicity as behoved 
it, for it was a military thing. No intriguing. Necker, the 
symbol of the new claims, was to go — booted out at a 
moment's notice and over the frontier as well. A man of 
the Queen's, a man who had been ambassador at Vienna, 
a very trusted servant of over fifty years continually with 
the Monarchy, a man of energy, strong-stepping, loud, 
Breteuil was in one sharp moment to take his place. Old 
Broglie, brave and renowned, was to grasp the army — 
and the thing was done: the Assembly gone to smoke: the 
debating over: silence and ancient right restored. And as 
for the dependence on opinion and on a parliamentary 
majority for money! . . . why, a bold bankruptcy and 
begin again. 

So the Queen saw the sharp issue, now that all the regi- 
ments were assembled. A corps of German mercenaries 
were in the Park, encamped ; their officers were cherished in 
the rooms of the Polignacs : they were a symbol of what was 
toward. Paris might or might not rise. If it rose, there 



282 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

would be action; if not, none. In either case victory and a 
prize worth all the miserable cajoling and submission to 
which the Court had been compelled while the soldiers were 
still unready. They were ready now. So the Queen. 

On Saturday the 11th of July, at three in the afternoon, 
Necker was sitting down with his wife and a certain 
friend to dinner: the excellent dinner of a man worth 
four millions of money — doubtfully acquired. Ten thou- 
sand men lay at arms within an hour of Versailles; at all 
the issues of Paris were troops amounting to at least two 
divisions more — mainly German cavalry : one regiment at 
Charente, Samade; one regiment at Ivry, one, of German 
hussars, at the Champ de Mars; one, of Swiss infantry, with 
a battery, at the Etoile (where is now the Arc de Triomphe) . 
Two more, German, south of the river; a whole camp at the 
northern gate — and many others. No food could enter 
the city save by leave of that circle of arms. . . . To 
Necker, so sitting there at table, was brought a note from 
the King; he opened it: it told him he was ordered out of 
office and ordered out of the kingdom too. He finished his 
dinner, and then took horse and coach and drove away 
along the Brussels road. 

There followed three days which very much resembled, 
to the Queen and the General Staff of the Resistance, those 
days during which a general action is proceeding at the 
front and a stream of accounts, true and false, exaggerated, 
distorted, coming pell-mell and in the wrong order, confuse 
rather than inform the anxious ears at headquarters far in 
the rear. Men tore galloping to and fro continually up and 
down the twelve miles of road between the palace and the 
gates of Paris. "Paris had risen." "No, only an unarmed 
mob parading the streets." "Yes, there had been a collision 



THE BASTILLE 283 

with Lambesc's cavalry." . . . On Sunday, late, a 
cloud of dust was Lambesc's orderly coming to Ver- 
sailles with news: there had been no bloodshed. Monday 
more rumours: "They are forging weapons." . . . 
"They cannot move: . . . they lack ammunition." 
. . "They have formed patrols: . . . the streets 
are patrolled." Then, at night, fires were reflected on the 
cloudy sky down the valley — the populace were burning 
the Octroi Barriers. 

It was determined by the chiefs of the army to force the 
northern gate of Paris and so to subdue the tumult — but 
there was neither fear nor haste: the tumult was a mere 
civilian tumult : the thousands roaring in Paris had no arms 

— and then what about organisation ? How can a mob 
organise ? Tuesday came, the 14th of July, a memorable 
day, and in the forenoon news or rumours reached Versailles 
that a stock of arms had been sacked. It was the Arsenal 

— no, this time came details ; it was the Invalides that had 
been sacked — twenty thousand muskets. More news: pow- 
der had been found and seized by the mob; in the great 
square before the Town Hall a jolly priest, sitting astride of 
a barrel, was seeing to the serving out of powder and of ball 

— one almost heard the firing. "The Bastille has most of 
the ammunition in Paris. No mob can take that! The pieces 
have been trained on the street a whole fortnight since." 
"The Bastille has checked the mob." "No, they have 
sacked that also, with all its ammunition." "They have 
captured artillery." "Nonsense! a mob cannot capture 
guns!" Then again, more definite and certain, longer 
accounts, eye-witnesses, as the afternoon drew on to evening. 
One: "It has fallen." Another: "I saw the governor 
killed. ... a thousand men in the crowd were hit. 



284 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

but the crowd kept on. . . « How many dead? A 
hundred, at least a hundred." "They have cannon on 
Montmartre — the northern gate cannot be forced." 
Berthier wrote to the King alone: "To-night the troops 
will master the streets." And meanwhile, like a chorus of 
human voices to all this roar of powder, the Assembly 
pouring out decisions and acting the moral sovereign man- 
fully in the face of material arms — sitting "permanently." 
Even at midnight, when nearly all was known and the 
popular victory assured, Bailly the Speaker was still sitting 
there presiding after a sitting of seventy-two hours over the 
drowsy Commons. 

And they had voted! They had voted regrets for Necker; 
they had voted the responsibility of all advisers of the King 
for these calamities: they had voted bankruptcy "infamous." 
So many moral broadsides fired at the Queen. 

The morning of the 15th came; the firing had ceased, 
the smoke had rolled away, and with it the issue of the 
action lay plain. Paris had conquered. 

The King alone with his brother, unarmed, unguarded, 
walked to the Parliament House and announced the with- 
drawal of the mercenaries; the Queen — bitterness of irony! 
— ^had to stand smiling with her children at the central 
balcony of the palace above the courtyard and to receive 
the ardent homage of the people for the failure of her great 
design; in a few months, in October, she was to stand 
on that balcony again. 

All that day and the next the King sat anxiously with his 
Council debating only one thing — Marie Antoinette's 
purpose that he should fly. She urged it with vehemence : 
her jewels were packed and ready — they would fly to Metz 
and conquer in a civil war; but the majority outweighed 



t4xx '(yU^*^.^ 




AUTOGRAPH NOTE OF LOUIS XVI. 

Recalling Necker, on Julv 16th, after the fall of the Bastille 



THE BASTILLE 285 

her, notably old Broglie, who feared the issue of German 
mercenaries against French troops — and the King 
remained. She with angry tears gave way: it was decided 
that the King should, upon the contrary, seek Paris on the 
morrow, accept and legalise the acts of the city, its new 
popular armed force, its new elected Mayorality, La Fayette 
the chosen head of the one, Bailly occupying the other. 

The royal plan had failed: let the King accept the new 
conditions and meet Paris half-way. Such were the 
decisions, and Louis wrote to Necker recalling him — the 
abortive Ministry of the Resistance was ended. 

But that night, in the dead darkness, Artois fled from the 
coming terror; old Vermond also, the friend and tutor, 
Enghien, Conde, many another; and the Queen, with 
passionate love, compelled one now again her friend to fly : 
the Madame de Polignac. She fled and was saved, bear- 
ing with her two ill-spelt, blotted lines in Marie Antoinette's 
untrained and hurried hand: "Good-bye, dearest of my 
friends; it is a dreadful and a necessary word. Good-bye!" 

In this way did the Assembly enter into its sovereignty, 
and in this way did Marie Antoinette first find — though 
she never knew or grasped — but first find the temper of 
the French people, who, perhaps alone in Europe, can 
organise from below. 



That creative summer of '89, in which the Assembly, now 
victorious, began its giant business, was in the Queen's eyes 
nothing but a respite for the Throne, or a halt in a retreat 
between one sharp action lost and the next to be ventured 
later, when new troops should be at hand and a new occasion 
serve. That these speech-makers hard by should declare 



286 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

a new creed of Rights, should — in words — abolish Feudal 
Dues, should debate the exact limits of the King's power — 
all that was wind. Even the anarchy, coincident with that 
vast transition, powerfully as it affected her spirit (and her 
letters show it) with horror, affected it still more with hatred 
and with a determination so to hold or tame this wild beast, her 
husband's people, that her son should have his right at last, 
and that she herself might be free from a ceaseless humiliation. 

They were killing men everywhere: they had killed the 
offensive and corrupt old Foulon in the streets of Paris — 
he and his powerful, loathsome son-in-law, Berthier: 
square-jawed, an oppressor grievous to God, Berthier who, 
so lately, in those abortive three days of the Resistance, had 
sat at the King's elbow promising that Paris should be held ; 
Berthier had been clubbed to death and shot down as he 
swung a musket in defence of his big body. In the prov- 
inces everywhere the country houses burned. 

The Queen waited. She wrote to her brother, to her dear 
friend Madame de Polignac; she chose (in the absence of 
that friend) a new governess for the Children of France, j 
the worthy widow of Tourzel, a duchess for the occasion, f 
She waited and did nothing. All September was a wrangling 
over the King's Veto — his right to refuse a law : she may 
have known vaguely that to her the nicknames of "Veto" | 
was thereby attached : she did not heed it. In the last days 
of the month a vigorous attempt to persuade the King to 
fly was once more made and once more failed. By Octo- 
ber new troops had come — their numbers were to prove 
insufficient for attack but fatally sufficient for enthusi- 
asm, and that enthusiasm of loyal courtiers (breaking 
out almost within earshot of a Paris fretting at every 
delay, hungry, mystified) provoked the next disaster. 



XII 
OCTOBER 

SEPTEMBER 23, 1789, TO MAUNDY THURSDAY, APRIL 1, 1790 

ON THE 23rd of September the Regiment of Flanders 
marched into Versailles. 

To seize all that follows two things must be clearly 
fixed: First, that the Queen was now separate from all 
the life around her; secondly that the accidents of the next 
fortnight determined all that remained of her life. 

The Revolution, now organised, possessed of regular 
authorities and of a clear theory, was in action, moving 
with the rapidity of some French campaign towards clean 
victory, or, upon an error or a check, defeat — a defeat 
absolute as are ever the failures of high adventure. 

The Queen has been called the chief opponent of that 
Revolutionary idea and of those new Revolutionary authori- 
ties: it is an error so to regard her; she did not meet their 
advance in so comprehensive a fashion. She saw nothing 
but a meaningless storm whirling about her; she cared for 
nothing in the great issue but the preservation during the 
tempest, and the full restoration at the end of it, of all that 
was to have been her little son's; she feared as her only 
enemy a violent and beastly thing, a mob, in whose activity 
she recognised all that had so long bewildered her in the 
French people; but while she feared it she also despised 
it as a thing less than human, incapable of plan, able to hurt 
but certain at last to be tamed. The march of Paris upon 

287 



288 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

Versailles which was now at hand, with its flaming brutality, 
its anarchy of thousands and of blood, confirmed in her for- 
ever her wholly insufficient judgment. From those days 
until she died her only appeal was to the foreigner, her only 
strategy the choice of manner and of time for using an 
actual or a potential invasion. 

It may next be asked why the Regiment of Flanders march- 
ing in led to such abrupt and to such enormous conse- 
quences.? It was accompanied by a section of guns only, 
and though its ready ammunition was high for a mere 
change of garrison in those days,' it was but one unit more 
where, three months before, division after division had 
been massed round Paris and throughout Versailles. 

The answer to the question is to be found in the temper 
of those who watched that entry. It took place in the after- 
noon with imposing parade ; the grenadiers of Flanders filed 
up the Paris road between the ranks of the Body-guard — 
a new regiment of the Guard which was still stranger and 
somewhat hostile to the temper of the crowd. Again, Flan- 
ders was a quasi-foreign regiment, comparable to those 
which the Crown had drafted in before the rising of Paris 
destroyed the plan of a civil war and had since, on a deliber- 
ate pledge, withdrawn. Again the reinforcement coin- 
cided with that long verbal struggle upon the acceptation 
by Louis of the Decrees (of the Rights of Man and the 
abolition of Feudal Dues) — a verbal struggle apparently fu 
tile, but in essence symbolic of the Veto of the Crown. To 
this it must be added that Paris, in which, in spite of harvest, 
a partial famine reigned, was again roused for adventure; 
that now for weeks the opposition of the King to the Decrees 
of the Assembly had exasperated the leaders of opinion — 

'They were eleven hundred strong, with about half a dozen reserve cartridges a man and the pouches full; 
also one waggon of grape for the guns attached to the regiment. 



1 



:i 



OCTOBER 289 

those innumerable writers and those orators who could now 
voice, inflame, and even guide an insurrection; finally, it 
must be remembered that there remained but one solid 
and highly disciplined body intact throughout the insurrec- 
tions of that summer, the desertions and the siding of the 
troops with the populace — this was the Army of the East 
that lay along the frontier under the command of Bouille. 
It was of no great size — some 25,000 men, but it was 
largely foreign (Swiss and German) in composition, was 
excellently led, well drilled, already political in the united 
spirit of its command. Thither it was feared and hoped 
the King would fly: a regiment or two to flank his evasion 
and to escort it would be suflScient : this was the meaning 
of the Regiment of Flanders. 

All this, however, would not alone have provoked an upris- 
ing : the departure of the King actually attempted might have 
done so, but we now know, and most then believed, that 
though the Queen urged flight, Louis would not consider it. 
The true cause of the catastrophe; the disturbance, which 
ruined the unstable equilibrium of political forces that 
October, was a manifest exaltation or crisis of emotion 
observable in the ofl&cers of the newly arrived regiment, 
still stronger in the Guards, pervading the whole Court, and 
nowhere centred more fiercely than in the heart of the Queen. 
It was as though the tramp of that one column of relief, 
added to so much restrained and impatient emotion, coming 
after the silent angers of that long summer, coinciding with 
a critical intensity of indignation and of loyalty within the 
palace, was just the final sound that broke down prudence. 
All the commissioned, many of the rank, betrayed the new 
glow of loyalty in chance phrases and in jests ; chance swords 
were drawn and shown, chance menaces or chance snatches 



290 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

of loyal songs in taverns led on to the act which clothed all 
this rising spirit with form, and stood out as a definite 
challenge to Paris and to the Assembly. 

It was customary (and still is) for the officers resident 
in a French garrison to entertain the officers of a newly-come 
regiment. The Guards had never done so yet. They were 
all of the gentry, the general custom of the army affected 
them little, for in all ranks the gentlemen of the Guard were 
in theory, to some extent in reality, equal in blood. Never- 
theless their officers chose, for the purposes of a political 
demonstration, the pretext of a custom hitherto thought 
unworthy of their corps. The Guard had fixed upon 
Thursday, the first of October, to show this civility to 
Flanders. In the atmosphere of these days the occasion 
could not but become a very different matter from such 
a dinner as the mess of even the premier corps — so 
acting for the first time — could offer to a provincial body 
of the line. 

In the expenses determined* and the place chosen, it 
was evident that all the Court was moving: the great theatre 
of the palace, unused for so long and reserved for the great- 
est and most official ceremonies, was made ready, lavishly; 
the tables were set upon its stages, the lights, the decorations 
were the King's; and when the officers of Flanders, all, 
perhaps (save their Colonel) , unready for so much splendour, 
found themselves in the Salle d'Hercule — the guests of the 
palace rather than of the Guards — it was apparent that 
some large affair was before them: they were led to the 
theatre and the banquet began. 

It was just three o'clock: down in the town the Assembly 

1 The dinner alone, apart from wine, ices, lights, etc., was, even in the prices of that day over £i a head, 
say nowadays £2. Yet the individual hosts were asked for but five shillings each: the difference must have 
been paid! And the wine! 



OCTOBER 291 

was voting the last clauses of the Constitution. In 
the courtyards of the palace the private soldiers of 
Flanders had gathered, buzzing, at the gates — later, and 
for a purpose, some few were admitted, but that was 
not before some hours had passed: they pressed curi- 
ously, now and then making way for some belated 
member of the band, which, with that of the Guards, was 
to play at the banquet. 

The tables were set in a horse-shoe, and two hundred and 
ten places were laid: more than the two messes were con- 
cerned ! Eighty seats were for the Guards — for all that 
could be found connected with Guards — and the Guards 
were there in full; double their usual number were in Ver- 
sailles: there were others, strange guests and chosen volun- 
teers. There were others, men whose presence proved a 
certain plan, officers of the local national militia, the new 
armed force of the Revolution, but officers picked carefully 
for their weakness or their secret disapproval of the national 
movement. So they sat down and began to eat and drink; 
there were provided two bottles a man.' 

Outside the great empty theatre the autumn evening 
closed; within, by the thousand lights of it, the ladies of 
the Court, coming, as the banquet rose higher, into the boxes 
to applaud, saw one by one the white cockades of the Guards 
transferred to their guests. The national colours were 
regulation for Flanders; they were the essential mark of the 
new national Militia — yet, first one guest then another, 
eagerly or reluctantly, weakly or defiantly, took on the white 
cockade of the old Monarchy which the Guards still 
legally wore. The women folded paper cockades and 
threw them down ... at last all seated there were 



1 410 men, 400 bottles. 



292 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

under the emblem; some say that black for the Queen was 
also shown. They drank to the King, the Queen, the Heir; 
the noise of laughter and of enthusiasm grew, the toasts and 
the cheers were exchanged from the boxes to the stage; 
the floor of the theatre filled with new-comers — speech and 
the exhilaration of companionship gained on them and rose, j 
Some there in wine felt now again, like a memory in the 
blood, the old and passionate French love of the Kings. 
Some, who had come to Versailles secretly determined for the 
Crown, now at last gave full rein and let the soul gallop to 
its end. All were on fire with that Gallic ardour for adven- 
ture against great odds, and in all that Gallic passion 
for comradeship was aflame. Some few of the rank and 
file were admitted . . . the heavy men of Flanders 
. . . they also drank. The Queen (the meat being now 
gone, the fruits come) was seen ; whether come by reluctance 
or willing, in her box. . . . They cried her name, and 
swords were drawn. They clamoured for her to come 
down from where she sat there radiant, hearing at last the 
voices and the mood upon which (so little did she under- 
stand of war) she imagined and had imagined her victory to 
depend. 

She came down and passed slowly before them and their 
delirium, smiling highly, holding in her arms her little son; 
and the King, less certain of the issue, heavy, splashed with 
the mud of his hunting, went with her as she proceeded. 
They passed. The height of their fever was upon these sol- 
diers; one leant over to the band and suggested, ^^ Pleasant 
it is to he . . . " The band consulted; they were not 
sure of the tune. "Well then, play' 'O Richard! Oh, my 
KingT" That everybody knew, anyone could sing it: it was 
a tune of the day — and with the music madness took them. 



OCTOBER 293 

They poured out into the cold night air of the marble court, 
singing, cheering, all armed — defiant of the new world. 
The whole life of the Palace and its thousands, invigorated, 
mixed with music and re-heightened the strain. Sundry 
bugles were blown as though for a charge. The noise of 
that clamour rang through the town, the populace without 
the gate was gathering, the Militia armed, and the crowd 
thus alarmed in the far night could see, beyond the court, 
under the brilliant windows of the front, a herd of men still 
cheering madly, the gleam of swords raised, and one dark 
figure climbing to the King's window to seize and kiss his 
hand ; and against the light within the shadows of the family 
approving. 

The colonel of the Versailles Militia went to the Palace 
and returned: the crowd dispersed, the cheering of the 
revellers died away. Next day was sober ; yet even all next 
day the exaltation, though now sober, grew. The national 
uniform of the Militia was insulted and challenged in 
Versailles, turned out of the palace. The Queen, ineffably 
ignorant, gave colours to a deputation of that Militia and 
begged them, with a smile, to believe that yesterday had 
'pleased her greatly — she had seen certain of their officers 
at the feast — and so little was enough to deceive her! 
There was another milder meeting (for the men), a mere 
exchange of glasses, and all Saturday, the 3rd of October, 
the armament of the Crown, such as it was — some thou- 
sands — stood ready and did not forget the valour and the 
ardent loyalty which their chiefs had lit with such memor- 
able cheers and songs. 

But another noise and another life began beyond that 
fringe of woods which eastward veiled Paris. The million 
of that place were in a hum: messages from them and to 



294 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

them. Marat had explored the new force in Versailles, the 
presses in Paris were raining pamphlets — something 
confused and enormous, a vision of their national King 
abandoning them, a nightmare of treason ; all this mixed with 
hunger oppressed the mind of the million. I say *' mixed 
with hunger," for though there was by this time plenty of 
grain there was little flour, and in the lack of bread violent 
angers had risen: some thought the Assembly (their talis- 
man), the very nation itself, to be again in peril from the 
soldiers. So all Sunday, October 4, the hive of Paris droned 
in its narrow streets and gathered; upon Monday, for the 
second time that year, it swarmed. 



To the west and to the south of Paris there runs a ring 
of clean high land against the sky, and it is clothed with 
forests; one part of it, still charming and in places aban- 
doned, is called the Forest of Meudon, and many who read 
this have walked through it and have seen at the end of 
some one of its long rides the great city below. 

In the morning of Monday, the 5th of October, 1789, 
the far corner of these woods near Chatillon rang with shots, 
and down one alley or another would come from time to time 
the soft and heavy beat of horses at a canter, as grooms and 
servants moved with the guns. The King was shooting. 
A south west wind blew through the trees with no great 
violence; some rain had fallen and more threatened from 
the shredded, low, grey clouds above. Of all the company 
in those alleys and between those high trees, on which the 
leaves, though withered, still hung, the King alone was 
undisturbed. His pleasure in horsemanship and his seven 
miles' ride from the palace, his delight in the morning air^ 



OCTOBER 295 

and his keen attention to the sole occupation that called out 
his lethargic energy, forbade him to consider other things; 
but all his suite were wondering, each in his degree, what 
might be happening in the plain below them, or in Paris, or 
in the town of Versailles which they had left — for it was 
known that Paris was moving. 

All morning long they shot in those woods until, when it 
was already perhaps past noon and rain had again begun 
to fall, a sound of different riding came furiously up the 
main alley which follows the ridge and springs from the 
high road. It was the riding of a man who rides on a 
fresh horse and changes post, and is a courier. His name 
was Cubieres, and he was a gentleman of the Court flying 
with news, straight in the long French stirrup, with a set 
face, and his mount belly to the ground. He took one 
turning, then another, came thundering up to the King 
and drew rein. 

The King, as this messenger reached him, was noting his 
bag in a little book. The message of Cubieres was that Paris 
had marched upon Versailles, that the great avenue road 
was black with tattered women and with men, seething and 
turning, and demanding food and blood. He brought no 
rumours, and he could tell the King nothing of the Queen. 
The King mounted. All mounted and rode at speed. They 
turned their mounts westerly again, and rode at speed toward 
Versailles. And as they rode two feelings dully contended 
in the mind of Louis: the first was anxiety for his wife; 
the second annoyance at the sudden interruption of his 
business; and later, as the bulk of the palace appeared far 
off through the trees, he was filled with that irritant wonder 
as to what he should do, what his action should be: the 
trouble of decision which cursed him whenever he and 



296 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

action came face to face. The wind had fallen and now 
the rain poured steadily and drenched them all. 



Consider that grey morning in the town also — I mean in 
the town of Versailles — and how under that same covered 
sky and those same low shreds of flying cloud the empty 
streets of Versailles were arming. 

Upon the broad deserted avenue before the gates of the 
National Assembly there were no passers-by ; the drip from 
the brown leaves of the trees, the patter from the eaves 
of the stately houses, and the gurgling of water in the gutters 
enforced the silence. Now and then an official or a member 
in black knee-breeches and thin buckled shoes, delicately 
stepping from stone to stone, would hurriedly cross over the 
paving, cloaked and covered by an ample umbrella, as was 
the habit of those heroes when it rained; but for the rest 
the streets were empty, the seats shining with wet under the 
imperfect autumn light. Far off, beside the railing and 
before the wrought- iron gates of the palace, the troops were 
beginning to form, for it was already known that the bridge 
of Sevres had been left unguarded and that the mob was 
pouring up the Paris road. The troops came marching 
from one barrack and another in the various quarters of the 
town, converging upon this central place, and some, the 
Swiss, were issuing from the outlets of the palace itself, 
and some, the Mounted Guard, were filing out of the half- 
moon of the royal stables, where now the Sappers and the 
22nd of Artillery may be found. They formed and formed 
under the weather. The Body-guard upon their great horses, 
deeply mantled and groomed as for parade, lined all the 
front; behind them the Swiss on foot filled the square of 



OCTOBER 297 

the courtyard; Ragged Flanders, the Ragged Regiment of 
Flanders, famous in song for its rags as for its amours and 
its drums,' stood by companies before them all in the wide 
public place, where all the roads of Versailles converge and 
make an approach to the Court and form an open centre for 
the royal city. 

The formation was accomplished, food was served, arms 
piled. They stood there in rank alone, with no civilians 
to watch or mock them under the rain, and behind them the 
great house they were guarding stood empty of Monarchy. 
And before them the wide avenue from Paris, the Avenue, 
which was the artery of opinion, of energy, and all the 
national being at that moment, stood empty also, and it 
rained and rained. The great body of troops, red, yellow 
and blue in bands, were the only tenants of the scene. 



Within the Assembly a debate not over-full of purpose had 
alternately dragged and raged: it had been known almost 
from the opening of the sitting that Paris would move. 
Those premonitions which have led the less scholarly or 
the more fanatical of historians to see in the Revolution a 
perpetual pre-arrangement and cabal, those warning things 
in the air which you find at every stage of the great turmoil 
(rumours flew before the King all the way to Varennes, 
and the victory upon the right wing at Wattignies was 
known in Paris an hour before the final charge) , those inex- 
plicable things had come, and immediately upon their heels 
had come direct news from one messenger after another: 
how the wine merchants' shops had been sacked, how the 
bridge of Sevres was passed, how the rabble were now 

* "Y* avail un Grenadier," etc. 



298 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

but five miles off and breasting the hill. That futility, which 
the Revolutionary Assemblies suffered less perhaps than 
other Parliaments, but which is inherent in all representative 
discussion, condemned this engine of the new Democracy to 
discuss on such a day nothing of greater moment than the 
order of that day, and the order of that day was the King's 
letter: for the King had written that he would "accede" to 
the Decrees (of Rights of Man and to the extinction of the 
Feudal Dues), but that he would not "sanction" them. And 
on the verbal discussion between the words "accede" and 
the word "sanction" legal tomfoolery was fated to bat- 
ten, while up in the woods of Meudon the King who 
had written that letter was still shooting peacefully and 
innocent of guile, and while so many thousands, desperately 
hungry, were marching up the road having Maillard — as 
who should say murder — for their Captain, and dragging 
behind them a section of their guns. 

From such futility and from such tomfoolery the debate 
was just saved by the strength of personality alone. Moun- 
ier, in the Speaker's chair, lent energy to them all, though of 
a despairing kind; and when someone had said to him, "All 
Paris is marching upon us," and had foreseen the invasion 
of the palace and perhaps the ruin of the Crown, he had 
answered, according to one version, "The better for the 
Republic," according to another version, "The sooner shall 
we have the Republic here." 

At the back of the great oblong colonnaded hall, trim 
Robespierre, fresh from the Sign of the Fox and from 
his farmer companions, was, in that vibrating and carrying 
little voice of his, laying down decisions. There should 
be no compromise ; if they compromised now the Revolution 
was lost. But he was careful to be strictly in order — 



OCTOBER 299 

he was always careful of that — and the thing on which he 
advised "no compromise" was not the mob, but the letter 
of the King. 

A larger man touched nearer to the life, though it was but 
an interjection; for Mirabeau, ever vividly grasping facts 
and things, had hinted at the Queen: that mob was march- 
ing on the Queen. He had said that he would sign if, in 
whatever might follow, "The King alone should be held 
inviolate." And there is one witness who affirms that he 
added in a whisper, which those on the benches about him 
clearly heard, that he meant specifically to exclude from 
amnesty and from protection the woman against whom 
so many and such varied hatreds had now converged, and 
who stood to a million men for innumerable varied reasons 
a legendary enemy, but one in her flesh and blood to be 
hated — the negation of all the hope of the moment and of 
French honour and of the national will. 



This woman, upon whom already lay the weight of so much 
discontent and terror, sat that morning for the last time in 
Trianon, where the rain was beating against Gabriel's graceful, 
tall windows and streaming down the panes. Some ill-ease 
compelled her, though the place was protected, remote and 
silent, and though the weather was so drear, to wander in 
her gardens and to cross the paths between the showers. 
In the early afternoon she was in the Grotto, and it was 
there that the news came to her, for a messenger found her 
also as that other one had found her husband. He bade 
her come at once to the palace and told her that the mob 
had filled the town. 

She came ; it was still the middle afternoon, and such light 



300 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

as the day afforded was still full, when she saw from the 
windows of the ante-chamber, looking over the full length of 
the courtyard, beyond the line of soldiers, that eddying vol- 
ume of the populace and heard the noise of their mingled 
cries. It was the first time in her life that she had seen the 
people menacing. She listened to the distant roaring for a 
long time in silence, with her women about her, until the noise 
of horse hoofs clattered upon the flags below, and she knew 
that Louis had returned. He came, booted and splashed, 
up the great stairs; there members of his Ministry and 
his advisers were ready. Marie Antoinette entered with 
them into the Council Room, and as the door was 
shut behind her there was shut out, though barely for an 
hour, the instant noise of that peril. 

This is the way in which Paris came to Versailles and 
began its usurpation of the Crown. 



There is a tall window in Versailles in the corner of the 
Council Room whence one can see the courts opening 
outwards before the palace, and so beyond to the wide 
Place d'Armes. Through that window, streaming with 
rain under the declining light of the pouring October day, 
could be seen the tumult. 

All the wide enclosure before the palace was guarded and 
bare. Over its wet stones came and went only hurried 
messengers — orderlies from the armed forces or servants from 
the Court. Holding the long 300 yards of gilded railing 
was the double rank of the Guards, mounted, swords 
drawn; next the Dragoons, a clear and detached line 
of cavalry; in front of these, in triple rank, the Regiment 
of Flanders. 






OCTOBER 301 

Three armed bodies thus guarded the sweep of the raiUngs 
and the approach to the palace in parallel order, and beyond 
them, right into the depths of the landscape, marched a 
vast and confused mob filling up the three great avenues 
and crowding half the Place d 'Armes ; in that mob, met at 
first in formation but now mingled with the populace, could 
be distinguished many of the armed Militia of Versailles. 
At such a distance no distinct voices could be heard, but 
roaring sound or murmur like the noise of a beach rose from 
the multitude and outweighed the furious patter of the rain 
on the glass: at rare intervals a shot was fired, wantonly, 
but no news of bloodshed came. From time to time a 
patrol of the Guard could be seen, towering on chargers 
high above the populace, forcing its way through; swords 
also, sometimes striking, could be distinguished. This uncer- 
tain and menacing sight, blurred in the rain, was all that 
the palace could distinguish. 

Within the King's room were a deputation of women and 
Mounier, the President of the Assembly, had been received, 
council upon council was held, that the Queen at least should 
retire to some neighbouring town, that the King should 
fly — but nothing was determined, and to that reiterated 
policy of flight so often suggested since July, now so press- 
ing, the King murmured as he paced back and forth, "A 
King in flight! . . . " It is said that the horses were 
ordered; but with every moment the plan became more 
difficult. Darkness fell upon a sky still stormy; the troops 
still held their lines, but the noises seemed nearer and more 
menacing. It was imagined better to withdraw the Guard 
at least, as the pressure upon them increased. 

The order may be criticised, but it may also be defended. 
La Fayette was marching on Versailles from Paris with a 



30^ MARIE ANTOINETTE 

considerable force of partly trained militia. The Guards 
round whom the legend of the supper had grown, and whose 
white cockades were an insult to the national colours, exas- 
perated the populace beyond bearing, and were, it was 
thought, the main cause of the pressure to which the 
troops were subjected. Wisely or foolishly, the Guard 
was withdrawn, the line regiments alone were left to 
contain the mob. 

It was eight o'clock, and for two hours further a futile 
deliberation proceeded in the royal rooms. In those hours 
first one messenger then another convinced the King of a 
thing inconceivable in those days — personal danger to himself 
and especially to the Queen. At ten o'clock he signed the 
Decrees, the refusal of which were thought to be the 
political cause of the tumult. At midnight could be heard 
at last the regular marching of drilled men: La Fayette 
had arrived with 20,000 from Paris — not soldiers, if 
you will, men of but three months' training, but in 
uniform, capable of formation and well armed — the 
Militia of Paris. 

So profound was the mental distance between the sur- 
roundings of the King and the leaders of the reform that not 
a few at Court feared this relieving force, thinking that such 
a man as La Fayette might be tempted to capture the Mon- 
archy with it and to betray it to the mob ! They understood 
him little. He showed that night some statesmanship, great 
activity, and an admirable devotion to duty: it was his 
judgment that failed. He judged falsely of what the crowd 
were capable; he underestimated his countrymen and he 
judged falsely of what his Militia could do; he overestimated 
uniforms and an imperfect drill. He urged that the regular 
troops, the pressure upon whom after all these hours was now 



OCTOBER 30S 

almost intolerable, should be withdrawn; he further urged 
that he should be permitted with his Militia and with some 
few of the Guard to police the open spaces and to protect the 
palace. 

His advice — the advice of the only man with a large armed 
force behind him — was accepted. By two o'clock there was 
silence and, as it was thought, security. Men slept as they 
could in such shelter as they might find or in the open. Far 
off there was the glare of a fire where, in the midst of the 
crowd, a wounded horse had keen killed and was roasting 
for food. The hubbub within the palace had died down; 
nothing was heard but the rhythmic clank of a sentry, or, 
as the hours passed, the challenge of a relief. The Queen 
also slept. 

Wliat followed has been told a thousand times. Her 
great bedroom looked east and south; it was the chief 
room in her wing, which, just beyond the central court, corre- 
sponded to the King's upon the northern side. From that 
room to the Council Chamber and to the King's private 
apartments there were three ways: the way by the main 
gallery of mirrors which her household took upon Sunday 
mornings and on all sorts of grand occasions to join the King 
for High Mass. A second shorter way through little rooms 
at the back, which were her own private cabinets ; and thirdly, 
a half-secret passage worked, now in the thickness of a floor, 
now in the space between two floors, and leading directly 
from the King's room to her own. 

All that afternoon and evening the new strength of her 
character had conspicuously appeared. Her friends, and 
her enemies, remarked it equally. There was something 
in her almost serene during these first experiences of peril ; 
but they were to grow far more severe. Her children she 



304 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

had sent into the King's wing. She was assured of peace 
at least until morning, and she slept.* 

Farther along than the tall chapel whose roof so dominates 
Versailles, towards what is now the limit of the Hotel of 
the Reservoirs, in the court which is called that of the 
Opera House, one of the great iron gates which gave entry 
into the palace grounds stood open on that gusty night of 
rain. A single sentinel chosen, from the Militia, stood before 
it. By this gate not a few of the crowd found their way 
into the palace gardens, and, coming to the Southern wing, 
vaguely knew, though the interior of the piace was doubtful 
to them, that they stood beneath the windows of the Queen. 

Marie Antoinette had slept perhaps three hours when she 
awoke to hear cries and curses against her name, and staring 
in the bewildered moment which succeeds the oblivion of 
sleep she saw that it was dawn. Then next she heard some- 
where, confused, far off, in the centre of the buildings, a noise 
of thousands and cries. Her maid threw a petticoat upon 
her and a mantle, and delayed her a perilous moment that 
she might have stockings on as she fled. She made for the 
private rooms that would take her to the King's wing, when, 
as the noise of the invading mob grew louder and their leaders 
(missing her door) poured on clamouring to find and to 
kill her, one of her Guards half opened the door of her 
room and cried, "Save the Queen!" The butt of a musket 
felled him: the Queen was already saved. 

The violence of those who thus poured past her door found 
no victim. She had run through her little library and 
boudoir, knocked at the door of the (Eil de Boeuf and had it 
hurriedly opened to her : she had knocked and knocked and 
someone had opened the door fearfully and shut it again j 

1 Fersen was in the palace that night. It has been aflarmed that he was with her. The story is certainly ^ 
false 



OCTOBER 305 

when she had passed through. She saw the (Eil de Bceuf 
barricaded. A handful of the Guard went desperately piling 
up chairs, sofas and footstools against the outer doors, while 
she slipped through to the King's room. He meanwhile, as 
the assault on the palace had awakened him also, had run 
along the secret passage to her room, and, seeing it empty, 
had come back to find her in his own. 

The eruption of the mob had been as rapid as the bursting 
of a storm. The immediate forming of the La Fayette's 
Militia Guard and its victory proved almost as rapid. The 
first shot had been fired at six, probably by one of the Guards 
at the central door : within an hour the Militia had cleared 
the rabble out, even the tenacious pillagers were dislodged 
and the populace stood, thrust outside the doors and massed 
in the narrow marble court beneath the King's windows, 
in part discomfited but much more angry, and with a policy 
gradually shaping in the common mouth : a policy expressed 
in cries that "they would see the King," that *'the King was 
their King," that "they must bring back the King to Paris." 

The morning had broken clear and fine and quite calm 
after the rain of yesterday and the wind of the night; its 
light increased with the advancing hours: the energy of the 
mob remained — and in the midst of it a long-bearded man, 
half-mad, an artist's model, was hacking off the heads of the 
two Guards who had been killed when the palace was rushed. 

The Queen looked down upon the flood of the people from 
the windows of her husband's room. Her sister-in-law 
was at her shoulder, her little daughter close to her left side, 
and in front of her, standing upon a chair, the Dauphin was 
playing with his sister's hair and complaining that he was 
hungry : and all the while the mob shouted for the King. 

The King showed himself. They would see the Queen 



306 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

too : and La Fayette, still their adviser and still trusted in a 
bewildered way as a sort of saviour, told her it was impera- 
tive that she should come. She went, therefore, to the great 
central room of all that house, the room which had been the 
state bedroom of Louis XIV., and stepped out upon the 
balcony of its central window, holding her children by the 
hand. The mob roared that they would have no children 
there. She waved them back into the room, and stood for 
some moments surveying the anger of the unhappy thousands 
packed beneath, with the new and serene day rising in the 
eastern heaven behind them. Her hands were on the rail 
of the balcony. She hardly moved. There were weapons 
raised in the tumbling crowd: one man aimed at her and 
then lowered his musket. La Fayette came forward, took 
her right hand, knelt and kissed it, and the little scene 
was over. 

How could she have known until that moment that there 
were such things ? 

It was certain more and more as the day grew to noon 
that the Court must obey and that the populace had morally 
conquered. In a little inner room the King and Queen sat 
together, and together they decided (or, the King deciding, 
she could not but decide in the same necessity) that they 
would return to Paris. She turned to her husband and said : 
*' Promise me at least this: that when next such an occasion 
shall come, you will fly while yet there is time." Louis, to 
whom the idea of flight was hateful, let his eyes fill with tears, 
but did not answer. 



Louis' decision to return was a wise decision. The popu- 
lar demand was not to constrain but to possess their King. 



OCTOBER 307 

It was not until later that the changing mood of Paris and its 
success seemed to make of that moment of October the 
beginning of the King's captivity; with some little difference 
in persons and in wills, this yielding to what all the national 
sentiment demanded might even yet have made of the 
Crown once more an active national emblem and of the 
person of the King a leader. 

It was half-past one when the carriages with difficulty 
came to the palace. It was two before the march to Paris 
began. 

The road from Versailles to Paris falls and falls down a 
long easy valley which the woods still clothe on either side 
of the very broad and royal highway : the woods rose in that 
autumn dense and unbroken for many miles. Two things 
contrasted powerfully one against the other: the howling 
turbulence of the crowd, the stillness of nature all around. 
It was as though some sort of astonishment had struck the 
trees and the pure sky: or as though these were spectators 
standing apart and watching what tempests can arise in the 
mind of man. 

The season was late; the foliage was but just turning; 
the gorgeous leaves hung tremulous in that still air: none 
fell. The masses of colour in the thickets of Viroflay were 
tapestried and immovable; and all this silence of the world 
was soft as well. The air had about it that tender, half- 
ironical caress which it possesses on perfect autumn days 
in the Parisis, and the sky was of that misty but contented 
blue which they know very well who have wandered in that 
valley upon such days. Cleaving through such beatitude, 
a long line of shrieking and of clamouring, of laughter and 
of curses, of the shrill complaints of women, of the moans 
of pain and of fatigue, mixed with the sudden wanton 



308 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

discharge of muskets, went, for mile after mile; the 
populace drawing back their King to Paris. 

It is not seven miles from the Palace to the river — not 
another four to what were then the barriers of the city. 
They took for these eleven miles all but seven hours. The 
coaches crawled and pushed through the swarm of the angry 
poor. The Queen, her husband and her children, Monsieur, 
Madame Elizabeth, the governess of the royal children — 
all sat together in one great coach rumbling along in the midst 
of insult and of intolerable noise. From where she sat, facing 
the horses near the window, the Queen could see far off at 
the head of that interminable column two pikes slanting in 
the air. The heads of the Guards who had saved her were 
upon them.' She could see here and there, close under those 
trophies, glints of yellow, where certain of the Foot Guards 
were marched like prisoners along, with the blue of the 
national Militia, flanking and escorting them on either side ; 
and, mixed in the crowd, the Mounted Guardsmen were 
there, prisoners also, with the Mounted Militia holding them. 
Of all that followed after, she could see nothing but she 
could hear. There was the rumbling of the wheels of the 
two cannon, the great sixty waggons loaded with flour, 
and she could hear the cries that cursed her own name. 
The afternoon wore on. The sun lay low over the 
palace they had left ; it was dusk by the time they reached 
the river; it was dark before they came to the barriers 
of the town. 

There, by the same gate of entry which the first of the 
Bourbons had traversed two hundred years before, the 
Monarchy re-entered that capital which, for precisely a 
century, it had, with a fatal lack of national instinct, aban- 

1 Or else they were not; there are two versions. 



OCTOBER 309 

doned. Bailly, the Mayor, met them under torches in the 
darkness and presented the keys of the city. The Royal 
Family must needs go on, late as it was and they lacking 
food, to the Hotel de Ville, that the crowds of the city might 
see them. It was not until ten o'clock that the unhappy 
household, the little children broken by such hours and so 
much fasting, found themselves at last under the roof of 
the Tuileries. 

The Tuileries were a barracks. 

The huge empty line of buildings, which, had they been 
thus abandoned to-day, would have been made a Sunday 
show, had in that age been put to no use; they had become 
in the absence of the Court but a warren of large deserted 
rooms. Furniture was wanting; there was dust and negli- 
gence everywhere; the discomfort, the indignity, the friction, 
were but increased by the hasty swarms of workmen 
who had been turned on in a few hours to fit the place for 
human living. No more exact emblem of the divorce 
between the Crov\n and Paris could be found than the 
inner ruin of that royal town house, nor could any 
deeper lesson have been conveyed — had the last of 
the Bourbons but heeded it — than the reproach of 
those rooms. 

As for Paris — Paris believed it had recovered the King. 
The month and more that followed was filled with a series of 
receptions and of plaudits. The Bar, the University, the 
Treasury, last of all the Academy — all the great bodies of 
the State were received in audience and joined in a general 
welcome. Parliament was at work again before the end of 
the month, first in the Archbishop's palace upon the 
Island, later in the great oval manege or riding-school 
which lay along the north of the palace gardens. It 



310 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

was there that all the drama of the Revolution was to 
be played.' 

That drama began to work, as winter advanced with a new, 
a more organised, and, as it were, a more fatal rapidity; 
and as the volume of the reform grew and its momentum 
also rose, the Queen sank back further and further into the 
recesses of her religion. 

Her energy was not diminished. Those few months of 
silence did but restore her power to act with speed and even 
with violence in the succeeding year, but for the moment, 
like a sort of foil to the speed of the current around her, she 
steadfastly regarded the only things that remain to the 
doomed or the destitute. 

The communion of her daughter chiefly concerned her 
then. To this it was that she looked forward in the com- 
ing spring, and this (insignificant as the matter may seem 
to those who know little of such minds) was the fixed interest 
of that winter for the Queen. 

Her letters during those months betray that momentary 
isolation. She inclined once more, after the tumults and 
defeats, to a not very worthy contempt for the slow, insuffi- 
cient, and absolutely just mind of her husband. There are 
phrases of violence like the sudden small flames of banked 
fires in those letters of hers in that season ; but her reserve 
remains absolute. She boasts that she "had seen death 
from near by.'* But "she will keep to her plan and not 
meddle." "My business is to see the King at ease." Then 
again, later, in Lent she sneers : " One at my side is prepared 
to take things in a modest way." She follows with a phrase 

1 Those curious to retrace the very sites of history, may care to know exactly where the manege stood, 
since in the wone^e, as a great phrase goes, "La France fit I'etemel." The major axis of its ellipse corre- 
sponded to the pavement to the north of the Rue dc Rivoli under the Arcades, and the centre of this axis was 
where the Rue Castiglione now falls into the Rue de Rivoli. Its southern wall slightly overlapped the line of 
the present railing of the Tuileries Gardens; its northern was about In a line with the northern limit of the 
property now occupied by the Continentfil Hotel. 



OCTOBER 311 

that Is reminiscent of the audacity she so recently showed 
and was again so soon to show: "/ shall not let the power 
of the Throne go at so cheap a rate." This letter, which, 
read to-day after so many years, breathes the too jagged 
vigour of the woman, has about it an awful character; 
for she wrote it to a man who, even as she wrote it, was lying 
dead; her brother and her mainstay, the Emperor. The 
desire to return to the arena is still in her: she writes once, 
wistfully, *' I must get hold of the leaders." There are other 
letters, passionate, womanish letters to her woman friends. 
To Madame de Polignac, out in exile at Parma, letter after 
letter. In these, as in all the rest, you read her instant of seclu- 
sion from the fight. That interval was one of five months. 

She in those five months, from the Days of the Dead in 
November, 1789, to the very early Easter of 1790, was like an 
athlete who, in the midst of some furious game, stands apart 
for a moment recovering his breath and relaxing his muscles 
while the struggle grows more active, separate from him, but 
acted before his eyes. Soon he will re-enter the press with a 
renewed vigour. And so did she when after that sad winter 
she combined with Mirabeau, and the driving force in those 
two minds tried to work in a yoke together. But for the rest, 
I say, religion chiefly held her. Her isolation was not so 
much a plan (as she pretended) as a physical and necessary 
thing. She was exhausted. She had done with the body 
for a moment. She was concerned with the soul. 

If one could portray graphically the accidents of that 
tragic life, if a mould could be taken of her great hopes and 
her great sufferings, if a cast in relief could be made of 
her passion, you would find, I think, in such a map of her 
existence two high peaks of exalted suffering and vision: 
the death of her son — so small in history, so great to her — 



312 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

would be the first; and the second would be those hours in 
October when she, to whom such all such things had been 
mere words, was first in her wealthy life threatened with cold 
air against her body, the vulgar in her bedroom, and death; 
when she first saw a weapon levelled at her and first came 
in physical contact with violence^ a thing that all save the 
wealthy and their parasites daily know. These were the 
two strong, new, and terrible days which had bitten into her 
experience. These were and remained her isolated mem- 
ories. The rest, her future evils, came by a more gradual slope : 
her very death was to her less enormous. Her dumbness 
during these winter months of '89 and the working inwards of 
her life was a reaction of repose after the shock of October. I 

By the vast mass of the Louvre there is a church dedicated 
to that Saint Germanus who preached against Pelagius in 
Britain, and who, as an old man, had laid his hand upon the 
head of the young Saint Genevieve, the goose-girl, near 
Mount Valerian and had foreseen her glory. This church 
has much history. From its tower rang the call to arms 
which roused the populace of Paris against the wealthy 
oppressor of the Huguenot faction and maddened the poor 
to take their revenge in the Massacre of St. Bartholomew. 
It was and is the parish church of the palace. Here, before 
Lent was over (upon Wednesday in Holy Week), the little 
girl, her daughter, knelt at her first communion. The 
Queen stood and knelt in the darkness of the nave, dressed 
without ornament, her fine head serious, her commanding 
eyes at once tender and secure. 



I cannot write of her or hear of her without remembering 
her thus; and that last power of hers, a power made of 



OCTOBER 313 

abrupt vivacity tamed at last by misfortune into dignity 
and strength, here, I think, begins. Such a power was not 
henceforward the permanent quaUty of her soul — far from 
it — but it appeared and reappeared. It was strong 
more than once for a moment in the last hours before she 
died . . . and how well one sees why such as had 
perceived in her the seeds of this force of the spirit, even 
when she was distraught and played the fool in youth, 
now, when it had blossomed, worshipped her! Upon 
this last mood her legend is built and survives. She had 
a regal head. 

She stood in the nave unnoticed in her black dress with- 
out ornament, and saw the little girl go up in white and veiled 
to the altar-rails. There was no one there. Never since 
Constantine had the Faith been lower in France; but the 
Faith is a thing for the individual mind and not for 
majorities. 

They went back homewards. They gave alms. 

Meanwhile, though this was her true life for those months, 
one must speak of what went on without: the rising of the 
Revolutionary song and the noises at her feet. For out of 
this swelling energy and increasing peril was to grow her 
experiment of an alliance with the virile brain of Mirabeau. 

There stands, side by side with the activity of mortal life, 
a silent thing commonly unseen and, even if seen, despised. 
It has no name, unless its name be religion : its form is the 
ritual of the altar; its philosophy is despised under the title 
of Theology. This thing and its influence should least 
of all appear in the controversies of a high civilisation. 
With an irony that every historian of whatever period must 



314 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

have noted a hundred times, this thing and its influence 
perpetually intervene, when most society is rational and 
when most it is bent upon positive things ; and now at the 
moment when the transformation of society towards such 
better things seemed so easy and the way so plain, now in late 
'89, before any threat had come from the King or any danger 
of dissolution from within, this thing, this influence, entered 
unnoticed by a side-door; it was weak and almost dumb. 
It and it alone halted and still halts all the Revolutionary 
work, for it should have been recognised and it was not. It 
demanded its place and no place was given it. There is a 
divine pride about it and, as it were, a divine necessity of 
vengeance. Religion, if it be slighted, if it be misunder- 
stood, will implacably destroy. 

It was the Queen's birthday, the Day of the Dead, 
November 2, 1789, one of those fatal and recurrent dates 
to which her history is pinned, which saw the sowing of 
that seed and the little entry of what was to become the 
major and perhaps the unending feud of our modern 
democracies. 

The clergy of the French Church were then national to a 
degree hitherto unknown in the history of the Church in any 
of her provinces. The national movement swept them all. 
The Episcopacy represented, in some few of the greatest 
sees the Revolutionary enthusiasms, in the mass of bishops 
the resistance to the Revolution which was exactly parallel 
to the attitude of the lay nobility. The parish clergy 
reflected with exact fidelity the homogeneous will of the 
nation. It was a priest who furnished the notes of the 
Revolutionary movement in the capital of Normandy. 
Later it was a priest who wrote the last (and the only liter- 
ary) stanza of the Marseillaise. Even the religious, or what 



OCTOBER 315 

was left of them (for monastic life had never fallen to a lower 
state or one more dead since first St. Martin had brought it 
into Gaul), met the movement in a precisely similar fashion, 
suspected it in proportion to their privilege or their wealth, 
welcomed it in proportion to their knowledge of the people 
and their mixing with them. It was the poor remnant of 
the Dominicans of Paris that received and housed and gave 
its name to the headquarters of pure democracy, the 
Jacobins. 

The clergy, then, were but the nation. The long cam- 
paign against the Faith, which had so long been the business 
of the Huguenot, the Deist, the Atheist, and the Jew, had 
indeed brought the Faith very near to death, and, as has so 
often been insisted in the course of these pages, it is difficult 
for a modern man to conceive how tiny was the little flicker- 
ing flame of Catholicism in the generation before the 
Revolution, for he is used to it to-day as a great combative 
advancing thing against which every effort of its enemies' 
energies must be actively and constantly used. The clergy 
as a body of men were national and willing to aid the nation; 
the Faith, which should have been their peculiar business, 
had almost gone — therefore it was that to put to national 
uses what seemed the grossly exaggerated endowments of 
religion seemed a national policy in that embarrassed time. 
Therefore it was that the endowments so attacked could ill 
defend themselves, for the philosophy of their defence, which 
lay in their religion, was forgotten. Obviously necessary 
and patriotic as the policy seemed, it awoke that influence 
of which I speak, which does not reside in men and which 
is greater than men, which only acts through men, but 
is not of them; and Religion — seemingly all but dead — 
rose at once when it felt upon it the gesture of the civilpower. 



316 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

It was, I have said, the 2nd of November, the Queen's 
birthday, the Day of the Dead, that the vote was taken upon 
the confiscation of religious endowments. The Hght was 
faihng as that vote began. The candelabra of the great 
riding-school were lit, and it was full darkness before the 
vote was ended, for five-sixths of all possible votes were cast 
and nearly one thousand men voted each to the call of his 
name upon a roll. When the figures were read, a majority 
of 222 had decided the thing, and, in deciding it, had deter- 
mined the dual fortunes of Europe thenceforward to our 
own time. The Revolution, a thing inconceivable apart 
from the French inheritance. Catholic Dogma, had raised an 
issue against the Catholic Church. For three weeks had 
the matter been debated ; the days of October had launched 
it, and while yet the Parlement was in Versailles a bishop — 
one later to be famous under his own name of Talley- 
rand — had moved in favour of that Act. 

It was a simple plan, and to see how immediate and 
necessary it seemed we have but to read the figures of the 
clerical funds and of their iniquitous distribution; yet it 
failed altogether and had for its effect only one effect much 
larger than any one dreamt — the creation of enmity in the 
only Thing that could endure, indefinitely opposed to the 
Revolution, mobile, vigorous, and with a life as long or 
longer than its own. 

The figures were these: In a nation of 25 millions now 
raising, by a grinding and most unpopular taxation, less than 
18,000,000 in the year, and of that paying quite one-half as 
interest upon a hopeless and increasing debt was present a 
body of men, 40,000 in number, whose revenues had always 
been considered as the retribution of a particular function now 
universally disregarded; and these revenues would almost 



OCTOBER 317 

suffice to pay the amount which would save the nation from 
bankruptcy. The property from which these revenues were 
derived was sufficient to cancel the debt and to set the nation 
free upon a new course of readjusted taxation, an increased 
and unencumbered activity and, as it seemed to all at that 
moment, to save the State. Talleyrand himself in his clear 
and chiselled speech put the matter with the precision of a 
soldier. The reform would wipe out all encumbrances, 
permit the destruction of the old and hateful taxes, notably 
the salt tax, suppress the purchase of public offices, and 
meanwhile permit the nation in its new course to pay without 
grievous burden regular salaries to the clergy as civil servants 
according to their rank, which salaries would abolish the 
gross inequalities which had arisen in the economic develop- 
ment of fifteen centuries. No ordained priest would have 
less than what was in those days regarded as a sufficient 
maintenance. The monstrous revenues of certain sees 
which were of no service to Religion or to the State, would 
disappear. 

The plan was simple, it seemed most rational, and, as I 
have said, it was voted — from it was to proceed directly 
within two months the creation of those Government notes 
upon the security of Church lands, whose very name is for 
us to-day a summary of the disaster — the Assignats : the 
Assignats, which have become a cant term for worthless 
paper. Before Christmas that ominous word was to appear. 
Before spring the false step of dissolving the moribund 
religious orders was to be taken. Before summer the plan 
to establish a national Church controlled by the State 
was to be formulated; within a year that simple plan of dis- 
endowment had bred schism and the fixed resistance of the 
King, later it engendered Vendee, Normandy, all the civil 



318 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

wars, and — with a rending that has all but destroyed Europe 
— a separation between the two chief appetites native to 
mankind, the hunger for justice in the State, and that other 
hunger for God, who is the end of the soul. The wound is 
not yet healed. 

Such was the principal act passing during those months 
of the winter and spring under the eyes of the Queen in her 
retirement and silence; accompanying that act was much 
more. The first of the plots had broken out, the first of 
those recurrent and similar plots for saving the person of the 
King; the first of the victims, Favras, had been hanged; 
the first hint, therefore, of a distinction between the King as 
head of the nation and the King as a person to be preserved 
had appeared. It was to grow until it threw into the whirl- 
pool of the Revolution the flight to Varennes. 

Just before the end of February the force upon which 
Marie Antoinette now most relied — her brother Joseph — 
died. Leopold, a character of no such readiness or matur- 
ity, succeeded him, and the Queen, reading his letter upon the 
27th, knew that she had come to that turn of human life after 
which, even for the most blest, everything is loss without 
replacement, until we stand alone at the tomb. Even for the 
most blest : for her the turn had come just as she and all of 
hers must sail into the darkness of a great storm. 

I have said that it was on the last day of March, Spy 
Wednesday, that she had stood obscure in her plain black, 
blotted against the darkness of the nave and watching the 
communion of her child. Upon the next day. Holy 
Thursday of 1790, was published by order of the Revolu- 
tionary Parliament, that official paper called "The Red 
Book," which suddenly heralded to all the public all that 
her Court had been, which gave body and form to all those 



OCTOBER 319 

hitherto vague rumours and legends of extravagance and folly 
which had been the chief weapons of her enemies. It 
was as though a malarial, impalpable influence weakening 
her had suddenly distilled into a palpable and definite 
material poison. It was as though some weapon of mist, 
which though formidable was undecided, had become 
suddenly a weapon of steel. The publication of that list 
of pensions, of doles, of bribes effected in her fortunes a 
change like the change in the life of some man whose repu- 
tation has hitherto suffered from hints and innuendoes, and 
who suddenly finds himself with the whole thing published 
in the papers upon the witness and record of a Court of Law. 

Let a modern reader imagine what that publication was 
by so stretching his fancy as to conceive the delivery to 
general knowledge in this country of what is done in payment 
and receipt by our big money-changers, our newspapers, our 
politicians, and let him imagine (by another stretch of fancy) 
a public opinion in this country already alive to the existence 
of that corruption and already angry against it : then he will 
see what a date in the chances of the Queen's life was this 
Holy Thursday! 

The business now before herself and such as were states- 
men around her was no longer to make triumphant, but 
rather to save the Monarchy. 



XIII 
MIRABEAU 

FROM APRIL 1, 1790, TO MIDNIGHT OF THE 20th JUNE, 1791 

THERE existed in France at that moment one force 
which, in alliance with the Government, could 
have preserved the continuity of institutions, 
among other institutions of the throne. That force resided 
in the personality of Mirabeau. 

Had he survived and so succeeded — for his failure was 
only possible with death — - the French nation might indeed 
have preserved all its forms and would then have lost 
its principle and power. It might have been transformed 
into something of lower vigour than itself, it might have 
grown to forget action, and the nineteenth century, which 
was to see our civilisation ploughed by the armies and sowed 
by the ideas of Napoleon — so that it became a century 
enormous with French energy and has left us to-day under a 
necessity still to persevere — might have been a time of easy 
reaction: a Europe without Germany, without Italy: a 
Europe having in its midst the vast lethargic body of the 
French monarchy and dominated wholly by the mercantile 
activity of England. 

This, I say, might, or rather would, have been the fate 
of the Revolution, and therefore of the world, with what 
further consequences we cannot tell, had Mirabeau, once 
in alliance with the Court, survived; for wherever in his- 
tory the continuity of form has been preferred to a spirit 

320 



MIRABEAU 821 

of renascence, such lethargy and such dechne has succeeded. 
But though an effect of this kind would have resulted for 
Christendom in general, for the Queen and for her family 
the success of Mirabeau would have been salvation. The 
air and the tradition of the palace would have survived; 
she would have grown old beside her husband in a State 
lessened but preserving many of the externals of power; 
her later years wise, resigned, and probably magnificent. 
As it was, the alliance between Mirabeau and the Court 
was made — but before the first year of its effect had run, 
Mirabeau was dead: he dead, the slope of change led 
Marie Antoinette, with rapid and direct insistence, to flight, 
to imprisonment, and to the scaffold. 

It is but very rarely that so much can be laid to the action 
of one brain in history. What were the characters in Mira- 
beau's position that made it true of him in this spring of 
1790 .'^ They were these: that he had through certain 
qualities in him become accepted as the organ of a popular 
movement; that, by other qualities more profoundly rooted 
in him, he was determined upon order; and, finally, that 
an early maturity of judgment — already hardened before 
his fortieth year — strong passions often satisfied and their 
resulting fruit of deadness, much bitter humiliation, the 
dreadful annealing of poverty working upon known and 
vast capacity, had rendered him quite careless of those 
imaginary future things the vision of which alone can sup- 
port men in the work of creation. He was now a man 
walking backwards, observing things known, judging men, 
testing their actions and motives as one would test natural 
and invariable forces, using the whole either to achieve 
some end which had already been achieved elsewhere — 
which was in existence somewhere and had reality — or 



322 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

to preserve things still standing around him, things whose 
nature he knew. He would have preserved all, and he 
would have degraded his land. This most national of 
Frenchmen would have closed to France her avenue of 
growth. He was "practical": and the chief quality of his 
people, which is the power most suddenly to evoke a cor- 
porate will, he did not comprehend. It was a mystery, 
and therefore he ignored it. Of things hidden he could 
divine nothing at all. The Faith, for example, being then 
driven underground, he utterly despised. 

His command of spoken speech, sonorous, incisive, 
revealing, dominating by turns; his rapid concentration 
of phrase, his arrangement and possession (through others) 
of innumerable details, were points that made him the 
chief of a Parliament: his courage and advancing presence 
— for he was a sort of lion — peculiarly suited him to the 
Gauls, and his love of men, which was enormous, for- 
bade the growth of those feminine enmities which are the 
only perils of our vulgar politicians to-day, and which 
sprouted from debate even in the high temper of the Revo- 
lution, as they must sprout wherever talking and not 
fighting is the game. 

His travel, his wide reading, his communication through- 
out Europe and in the greatest houses with numerous close, 
varied and admiring friends, gave him that poise and 
that contempt for vision which made his leadership, when 
once he led, secure. 

With all this went the passion to administrate, to do, 
which months of speeches and of opposition to the executive 
had but swollen. In April his opportunity came. 

It was the Queen who made this capital move. 

For many months, indeed, he would have come in secret 



MIRABEAU 323 

to the aid of the Court. From the very meeting of the 
States-General the year before, Mirabeau had known that 
his place was with Government rather than in the tribune. 
His past of passion forbade him executive power. Necker, 
with quite another past — a nasty financial past — had 
dared to insult him in the early days of the Parliament. All 
the summer he had begged La Marck, his friend, to speak 
for him to the Queen, to the Throne. La Marck, who was 
very close to the Queen and was a companion since Trianon, 
had spoken, but Mirabeau was still a voice only, and, to 
women, an unpleasant one. In October he had directly 
attacked the Queen — she held him responsible for the two 
dreadful days and the insults of the drag back to Paris. 
The decrees in November which preserved the Assembly 
from decay, by forbidding its members to accept office, had 
closed the Ministry to him: in December he had tried to 
work a secret executive power through Monsieur and 
Marie Antoinette's distrust of Monsieur had again foiled 
him. La Marck had given up hope of helping his friend, 
the decrees and the debates of the Assembly shook the 
Throne with increasing violence, the King was counselless, 
when, after some long debate within herself, of which, in 
the nature of the thing, we can have no hint or record, the 
Queen, in the days when the preparation for her child's 
sacrament was her chief affair, and a fortnight or so before 
that communion, determined to unite the brain of Mira- 
beau to the Crown. 

She easily persuaded Louis. Before or after that per- 
suasion she spoke to Mercy, and Mercy wrote to that ances- 
tral Balzic land whither La Marck, certain that nothing 
could be done in Paris, and desiring to check the effects of 
the revolt in the Austrian Netherlands upon his estates, 



324 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

had betaken him three months before. La Marck at once 
returned; he crossed the frontier, and in his private house 
up along the Faubourg St. Honore, Mirabeau and Mercy 
met upon an April evening. All was most secretly done, 
so that none, not the populace, nor the Parliament, nor the 
courtiers — nor even Necker — should know. These two 
very separate abilities, Mercy and Mirabeau, recognised 
each other : for some days yet, the latter and the greater, the 
storm-tossed one, doubted; he still spoke of "an embassy" 
for his reward — he stooped to beg favour again of La 
Fayette. At last he was convinced of the Court's sincerity, 
and on the tenth of May he wrote for the King — that is, 
for the Government (there was no other) — that first 
admirable Letter of Advice which remains the chief monu- 
ment of his genius. In one year he had proceeded from 
being an Evil Reputation to be a Speechifier, from a Speechi- 
fier to a something inspiring dread: now he was secretly 
in power; in half -power; his was one of the hands on the 
tiller. To himself that year had been but a year of debt 
and makeshift; his principal relief at this vast change was a 
relief of the purse. 

Mirabeau wanted money. He was a gentleman, and his 
honour wanted it. In his appetite for it he did all a gentle- 
man would do, sacrificing that which men not gentlemen 
would not part with to save their lives. He approached 
enemies and friends indifferently. La Fayette, whose 
militia power offended him and whose nullity drove him 
wild, La Fayette whom he had attacked and publicly jeered 
at, he quietly tapped for .£2,000 and railed when that cau- 
tious Saviour of Two Worlds sent less than half the sum. 
He had the gentleman's morbid shame of old debts and the 
gentleman's carelessness in contracting new. He was of the 



MIRABEAU 325 

sort that kill themselves rather than finally default, and 
yet who take the road that makes defaulting sure. To such 
a man, now rising on the Revolutionary wave, entertain- 
ing, ordering secretarial work on every side, playing the 
part of a public god, the offer of the Court was new life. 
Yet here again some apology must be offered to the modern 
reader for the pettiness of the sum which sufficed in those 
days to purchase so much power upon such an occasion. 
For the salvation of the Monarchy Mirabeau was to receive, 
upon the payment of his debts, not half the income we give 
to a politician who has climbed on to the Front Bench: 
when he had accomplished his task he was to receive, 
upon retirement, a sum that would just purchase such a 
pension as we accord for life to a nephew or a son-in-law 
fatigued by two years of the Board of Trade. He accepted 
the terms: but for him, and for those like him, a wage, 
however shameful or secret, is but an opportunity for intense 
and individual action. He was the more himself and the 
less a servant when he had wages to spend. He designed 
his campaign at once: to see the Queen upon whose energy 
alone he relied and in whom — though he had never kissed her 
hand or spoken to her face to face — he divined a corre- 
sponding courage; and next, through her, while maintain- 
ing his demagogic power, to crush the growth of anarchy 
by the welding of an army; and at last to restore the Mon- 
archy by a civil war. For order was, he imagined, the chief 
affair, and anarchy was all that great brain could discover 
in the early ferment of the time. 

He was a man very capable of being a lover: he w^as an 
artist who ardently desired an instrument: he trusted his 
capacity with women, and he far over-priced the power in 
action, though not the vigour, of the Queen. She upon her 



326 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

side dreaded the meeting and delayed it, though Mercy 
himself and the new Archbishop of Toulouse, now her 
confessor, urged it. 

Upon the 4th of June the Court had left Paris for St. 
Cloud to spend, within an hour of the capital and with- 
in sight of it, the months of summer. That memorable 
anniversary of her son's death isolated and saddened the 
woman upon whom was thus thrown a responsibility too 
great for her judgment. All the month she hesitated, 
while the notes from Mirabeau in his new capacity as 
Counsellor of the Court, coming in continually more insistent, 
more authoritative, and more wide, made the meeting a 
necessity. At last, upon the 29th, she decided. A 
room was chosen, "such that none could know" ; he was 
to come upon Friday, July 3, to the little back door 
of the garden toward the park ; there was a further delay — 
he was put off to the morrow. He slept at his sister's house 
at Auteuil, and early on the Saturday morning, taking his 
sister's son with him for sole companion, disguised, he 
drove to the little garden door. Everything was silent 
about him in the summer morning as he drove from Auteuil 
to St. Cloud, that nephew of his riding as his postilion, 
and no one by. A certain suspicion weighed upon him. 
He remembered the delays, the secrecy; he remembered that 
no friend loved him as much as each loved or hated the 
Crown. Before he put his hand to the latch he gave the 
boy a note and said: "If I am not returned within three- 
quarters of an hour, give this to the Captain of the Militia," 
and, having said this, he went alone into the garden. ^ 

In France and throughout his world the event of those 
days was the Federation. In ten days all the delegates 
would meet upon the Champ de Mars for the ajmiyersary^ 



MIRABEAU 327 

of the Bastille : the change in men was to be confirmed in a 
vast meeting of friendship: the King was to swear and a 
world quite renewed was to arise. Even in London the 
blaze of the triumph had struck the street, and the com- 
mon shows were preparing pictures and models of the feast. 
Upon this all Europe was turned as the delegates came 
swarming daily into the simmering July of Paris and as the 
altar rose upon the great open field by the river. For 
him, and now for history also, a greater, what might, had 
Mirabeau lived, have been a more enduring scene, was the 
secret morning meeting so prepared. 

The Queen awaited him in a room apart, the King at 
her side. She awaited with some hesitation the fierce step 
and the bold eye, the strong, pitted face of "the Monster," 
but her rank and a long apprenticeship to reception had 
taught her to receive. He came in and saw this woman 
whom he had so much desired to see; he spoke with her 
for half an hour, and as he left her he kissed her hand. 
Two things remained with him: the moderation, the over- 
moderation of the King, but in her a sort of regal deter- 
mination which was half an illusion of his own, but which 
most powerfully filled his spirit and which left him enfeoffed 
to the cause he had so long chosen to serve. He came out 
to his nephew, where the carriage waited, radiant, all his 
energy renewed. He had perhaps a clear conception of 
the Queen in action supporting him, determining the King, 
eagerly accepting his wisdom and his plans. In that he 
gave her far too great a place; but great men impute great- 
ness, and Mirabeau was too great for women. 

The show of the Federation passed, gloriously; the life 
of the nation rose to passion and broke bounds. In the 
matter of the army, by which alone Authority could live, 



328 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

Mirabeau saw its strength dissolved. The melting of society 
had destroyed that discipline, the hardest, the most neces- 
sary and the least explicable bond among men : the frontier 
mutinied for arrears of pay, and with the first days of 
August it was evident that neither for defence nor for the 
re-establishment of law could the army be available. The 
army, that one solid weapon of the Monarchy, was now 
cracked all down the blade. The Army of the East, 
long, as I have said, the chief resource of the executive, 
was affected like the rest of the service. There Bouille, 
a trained and careful man, wealthy, noble of course, 
whiggish in politics, and of middle age, held the command and 
saw from one day to another in all the garrisons of his com- 
mand the method of soldiers failing. One mutiny followed 
another; regimental chests were seized for arrears of pay; 
the non-commissioned officers were no longer with the 
cadre in spirit; officers of the lower grades had been insulted, 
of the higher reluctantly and more reluctantly obeyed. 

It was at this moment that Mirabeau saw fit to give that 
grave advice for which posterity has judged him so hardly, 
and which yet betrays the decision of his soul. He deter- 
mined upon civil war. 

Many things might have saved him and the nation from 
such a policy: notably La Fayette, a plaster head of the 
Militia might have been made a reserve force behind the 
failing regulars, and it has been pretended that La Fayette 
and Mirabeau were now quite separate, and the wealthy 
young fellow useless to his elder the Statesman, because 
La Fayette, in opposing Mirabeau's presidency of the 
Assembly for the Federation, had offended the vanity from 
which great orators suffer. The cause is insufficient. 
Mirabeau had lost all hope that La Fayette could act. He 



MIRABEAU 329 

passed him by. What as a fact did prevent the immediate 
prosecution of Mirabeau's policy was the insufficiency of 
the Queen, and this it was that saved the country and the 
memory of her adviser from a course that would certainly 
have preserved the Throne. 

Contrasted against the surroundings of her family and 
her Court, even of her immediate enemies, her decision had 
shone; contrasted against Mirabeau's will it was pale. 
She preferred, she even attempted to foist upon him, that 
project of foreign intervention which, three years later, 
killed her; and his famous words in his Advice of August 
13, seemed to her rhetoric or worse. Its style was "extra- 
ordinary": he was "mad." "Four enemies are at the 
charge," he had written, "the taxes, repudiation, the army, 
and winter " — she could not bear the style : but he was right. 
The harvest was in — it was not sufficient; a new and vast 
increase of assignats was voted — Mirabeau himself most 
urgently advising it — and on all this, at the end of August, 
came Nancy. 

The chief and the last foundation of force for the King 
were the Swiss regiments. Those of the Guard in the 
last supreme moment of the Monarchy all but saved it. At 
Nancy in that August of 1790 three regiments were quar- 
tered, two French, one Swiss, that called "Chateau Vieux," 
They mutinied, mainly for pay; after scenes which do not 
concern this book, they were broken — upon the last day 
of the month, with a loss to the still disciplined troops 
opposing them of forty officers and ten times that num- 
ber of men. The gravity of that day was of a kind we also 
know, when, in some crisis (with us such crisis has been for 
generations foreign, not domestic), a much graver thing, 
a much louder noise, brings to a pitch emotion ready for 



330 * MARIE ANTOINETTE 

violence and suddenly presents as a reality what all had 
desired or feared. Of such are the first shots of a war, 
the first news of a fatal illness. The French mutineers 
were disbanded. The opinion of the moment would have 
tolerated no course more severe : but — and this was the 
wedge that stuck into the heart of the time and clove men 
asunder — the Swiss were made such an example of old 
things as the whole Revolution had come to sweep away. 
True, their own rich officers were the judges of the Swiss; 
what was done did not then lie and does not lie to-day on 
the conscience of the French people; but when of these 
foreign peasants, driven by poverty to a foreign service and 
maddened to mutiny by the fraudulent retaining of their 
pay, one-half were made the subjects of a public horror, the 
country gasped. The town of Nancy, a town of great 
beauty, the flower of Lorraine, had fought with and had 
supported the mutineers. It suffered the sight of half 
of the whole Swiss regiment marched out for punishment, 
half sent to barracks and then reserved for some obscurer 
fate. Of those so publicly destroyed, two-thirds were for 
the galleys, near a third were hanged on high gallows before 
all, to turn the stomachs of the new Citizens of a free state; 
one was broken on the wheel w^ith clubs, his bones crushed to 
satisfy the privileged in a social order already infamous, 
his blood spattered on the pavement of a town which had 
befriended him. It was an anomaly of hell fallen in the 
midst of the new hopes and within six weeks of that clamour 
of good-will upon the Champ de Mars when all such night- 
mares were to have been buried for ever. 

The Assembly voted its thanks for the restoration of 
order: the vote was moved by Mirabeau. Bouille com- 
manded an army now silent, and the thing was done. 



MIRABEAU • 331 

But the minority of wealthy men that had thus dared 
applaud the executions at Nancy was now cut off from 
fellowship with the nation, and the civil war which Mira- 
beau desired was come in spirit — for the Government, 
the only possible executive, the Crown, was with that 
minority. 

Necker, lost in public opinion, defeated in finance, 
thoroughly terrified at the sound of arms, was off across 
the frontier for ever to Geneva, his Bible and his money- 
bags. For a few months Mirabeau's strength was to remain 
increasing, the one central thing — but secretly his power 
of action was marred, for, while the Court listened and 
heard him, it did not move. He would have seen the Queen 

— she would not see him. Already his complicity was 
guessed by a few — it had been denounced frenziedly and 
amid Parliamentary jeers and laughter by one young man, 
since dead: but the rumour had terrified the palace. Mira- 
beau, still taking the palace's pay, still pouring in upon it 
Advices which he desired to be commands — (and yet still 
refused so much as a Royal audience) — grew continually 
upon the Parliament. 

As his power over the Assembly increased, his fret against 
the hesitation of the Court increased with it; it increased 
to desperation, and that desperation was the more exasper- 
ated because a man of his temper could not grasp — in 
the absence of personal interviews — what it was that 
held back the Crown. Yet to a man of another temper 
the explanation would have been easy. There was a con- 
flict, not only of mediocrity with genius, not only of two wills 

— the one accustomed to an inert command, the other avid 
to exercise a vigorous one, but a conflict also of ends to 
be attained ; for that which Mirabeau desired — and 



332 • MARIE ANTOINETTE 

which he thought the King and Queen to desire — was a 
national thing, whereas what the King and Queen now 
desired was a personal thing. He all the while was con- 
sidering the Monarchy, an institution necessary to his 
country : they thought more and more daily of their individ- 
ual selves: their habits, their wounded right, their chil- 
dren — their religion. 

In nothing did the friction of that new machine, the 
alliance between Mirabeau and the Court, show more than 
in this matter of religion. To Mirabeau, as to every vigor- 
ous spirit of that generation, the Faith was inconceivable. 
How far, by an effort of fancy, he could picture minds that 
held it one cannot tell, but one may be certain that he 
could not but associate such minds with ineptitude. Now 
the business of 1790, unknown to the men who most mixed 
in that business, was Religion. France had of herself 
transformed herself in eighteen months. The Roman 
conceptions had returned, the municipalities governed, 
the whole people were moving in a stream together, equal- 
ity had re-arisen to the surface of things; war, if war came, 
would be a national thing — the life in each had deter- 
mined to be based upon a general will. At this over- 
whelming change the Parliament had assisted; it was 
their function to express its main features in new laws, 
and, as to details, to thresh them out in debate and make 
them fit the new scheme: among these details was the 
definition of the Clergy's status. The Catholic Church 
was present — for the peasants, at least — and it must 
there still be recognised, its powers must be defined, the 
terms of its recognition must be formulated. These cul- 
tivated men of the Parliament — and I include the bishops 
— had no conception of Resurrection. The Church was 



MIRABEAU 333 

an old thing, passive, woven into the lower stuff of the 
State; it would not again be what a dim tradition affirmed 
it once to have been. Let it die down quietly in its villages 
and go. As for the Institution of it, the higher-salaried 
places — its use in Government — why, that was to be 
Galilean. 

Just before the Federation in July, the CIVIL CON- 
STITUTION OF THE CLERGY had passed the 
House. Just before Nancy the King had assented, and 
it was law. 

To the men who spoke and legislated, it was a just and 
straightforward law; to us who know a future they could not 
know, it was a monstrous absurdity. Priests and bishops 
"elected" — not by an enthusiasm or by clamour or by a 
populace ardent, but by paper votes — as we elect our 
dunderheads to Westminster! Unity, the prime test of life, 
secured by no more than a letter to Rome announcing elec- 
tion and courteously admitting communion. Every diocese 
and parish a new creation, created without any consultation 
of Peter and his authority ! Yet such was the sleep of the 
Faith a century ago that this incredible instrument provoked 
discussion only ; and such protests as came were not pro- 
tests of laughter or even of anger, but protests of argu- 
ment — with after-thoughts of money. But the King and 
the Queen believed. 

Had she not suffered, this void of the century in matters 
of the soul might have left Marie Antoinette indifferent. 
She had been indifferent to that prig brother of hers 
when he played the philosopher at Vienna and the fool in 
the Netherlands. The populace, who guard the seeds of 
religion, were unknown to her as to the King and to 
the Parliament. But she had so suffered that she had 



534 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

concentrated upon the Creed : her husband had always held 
it simply — he was a simple man. Now, when he signed 
the Civil Constitution and she knew of that act, it was 
proof that they had done with the national ferment, that their 
concern was to get away to return and to reconquer; that 
henceforward no public act of theirs, no acceptation of any 
Reform, had in it or was meant to have the least validity 
in conscience. She especially was quite cut off henceforward 
from the crown she had worn — it was no longer a symbol 
of her state for her; and if she had continued to wear it, 
as Mirabeau desired, after a reconquest achieved through 
civil war, she would have worn it contentedly over defeated 
subjects rather than over a nation. 

All this Mirabeau saw as little as he saw the passion 
of the village priests, the anger of the women in the country- 
sides. The resistance (which immediately began) he 
thought purely political. Priests that would not take the 
oath were Partisans of the old tyranny and breakdown; 
the Pope, who was preparing his definite refusal, was a 
subtle Italian whom he, Mirabeau, must meet by a Gallic 
brutality. To the King Mirabeau secretly represented the 
Civil Constitution and the gathering revolt against it as an 
excellent lever for recruiting the provinces and raising that 
civil war of the Government against anarchy which was his 
whole policy; but to the Assembly (and here it was most 
of himself that appeared) he spoke against the Church's 
refusal to accept with a violence that astounded, and at 
times provoked to rebuke, his most extreme admirers. 
All his spirit during that autumn and early winter of 1790- 
91 is one of diatribe and fury against the intangible foe he 
himself had raised. 

On the 26th of November he forced the Assembly to vote 



I 



MIRABEAU 335 

tlie prosecution of priests who refused the oath; on the 4th 
of January he accused the hierarchy of their old game — 
"too well known in our history" — of playing for an "ultra- 
montane" authority; ten days later, on the 14th, he 
broke all bounds: swore that the priests cared little if 
religion died (and much he cared for it!) so that their 
"power was saved. The priests present left the hall. He con- 
tinued with greater violence, and all the Assembly protested. 
On the proposition of Camus (himself next door to a 
Huguenot) it was moved and carried that Mirabeau be no 
longer heard. When, a bare week after all this, a Letter 
of Advice reached the King from Mirabeau headed, "0?i 
the Way to mal'e use of the Civil Constitution,'' how should 
the King not be bewildered ? 

The King read it; he found a stupefying series of coun- 
sels. How could so simple a man as he understand the con- 
tradiction between Mirabeau's public speeches and secret 
executive advice .^^ "No time" (he read in Mirabeau's 
private communication to the Crown), "no time could be 
more favourable for uniting all the malcontents, the most 
dangerous ones, and raising his royal popularity to the 
detriment of the Assembly"; he was to provoke resistance 
secretly, to refuse executive aid : to throw the odium of the 
Civil Constitution and of the priests' resistance to it on the 
Assembly. What could a man of Louis' kind make of all 
this ? Had Marie Antoinette been a she-Mirabeau, as 
Mirabeau half believed her to be, she might have followed 
the plan. Contrariwise, she was a Christian mother, much 
too untaught and too devout by now to use religion for 
political intrigue. To emphasise their bewilderment, this 
Husband and Wife find that their late Confessor — whom 
they had indignantly rejected for his schism — had taken 



336 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

the oath at the pressing of Mirabeau himself. ... It 
is not to be wondered at that Mirabeau's advice in every- 
thing hung fire. 

There were other glaring contrasts between his public 
and his private view: there was Mirabeau's high playing of 
the demagogue role. He must roar with the Jacobins : that 
organisation, the "radical thousand" of Paris, and a hun- 
dred and fifty societies at its back throughout France, 
already directed the storm from the October of '90. He 
mixed with it, flattered it, became its powerful spokesman 
in the Assembly, was its President by the end of November; 
and while he so marked and emphasised with his voice and 
will almost every one of the succeeding steps that led 
towards a pure democracy, he marvelled that the Court 
would not accept his secret counsel and believe his support 
of the Crown to be his true motive of action all the while. 
It was indeed his main motive; but men of his stature also 
require applause, and the double part he filled was acted 
too brilliantly upon its public side for his private states- 
manship — to which all his intellect and much of his heart 
was really devoted — to obtain full weight at the palace. 
He was permanently mistrusted, and he met that mistrust 
by chance phrases of contempt or insult which he may or 
may not have intended to be repeated to the woman and 
the office which he desired both to guide and to save. 

In one thing, however, his influence still weighed: in that 
one thing it would have sufficed, had he lived, to save the 
Queen. I mean in the plan, still debated and still post- 
poned, for the abandonment of Paris by the Crown. 

I have said that the main understanding between the 
Queen and Mirabeau lay in this, that for him a national 
for her a domestic end was now in view. For months he 



1 



MIRABEAU 337 

had urged a public withdrawal from the capital, a public 
appeal to the armed forces, a withdrawal to some near and 
loyal town, a town with a palace and tradesmen dependent 
on it — to Compiegne, for instance, a long day's ride' away; 
thereafter an appeal to the provinces and, if the extremists 
and Paris would fight, then a civil war and a reconquest 
of power. He had talked of the Queen on horseback 
with her son; he resurrected Maria Theresa and imagined 
bold things. The Queen desired for her husband, herself, and 
her children merely safety: but she would not leave the King. 

Once that summer the Queen and her children had driven 
out from St. Cloud towards the western woods that over- 
hang the Seine; the King and his gentlemen had ridden 
westward also in the wooded plain below. Many in either 
retinue had thought the moment come, but each party 
returned at evening. 

Returned to Paris in the autumn, the rising flood of pub- 
lic feeling made a public appeal and a public withdrawal 
more difficult with every succeeding month, and month 
after month it was postponed. 

The foreigner, of whom the French had hardly thought 
during the first months of their enthusiasm, now re-arose 
before them; many were already anxious for the frontier, 
and already the irritant of German menace, which was to 
lead at last from Valmy to Wattignies and from Wattignies 
to Jena, had begun to chafe the military appetites of Paris. 
Were war to break out with the spring of the next year — 
nay, were it only in the air — the escape of the King from 
Paris would be more difficult than ever. 

It was at the close of October,' before the Court had left 

* To be accurate, a little less than fifty miles. 

2 Oct. 2oth, not the 23rd, a date accepted since the publication of Bouill^'s Memoirs in 1833, but corrected 
by collation with the original two years ago. 



338 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

St. Cloud for Paris, that the plan for leaving Paris first took 
definite shape and that Louis sent Parniers with a message 
to Bouille at Metz. 

Mirabeau had pointed to Bouille as the only general 
to defend that march. Not because Bouille was on the 
frontier, but because Bouille had got his army in hand 
again, was very capable, did not intrigue. But Bouille, 
in Mirabeau's design, was to come westward and to receive 
the King at Compiegne. The General himseK accepted 
such a plan and urged it. The King still preferred a flight 
to the very frontier, Besan9on for choice, and it is impos- 
sible — when his reluctance to leave at all is considered, 
his whole character, his wife's counsel, and her previous 
attitude in the letters and appeals of that summer — to 
doubt that the Queen had moulded that decision. It 
was not a firm choice. Bouille's son, coming at Christmas 
to Paris to sound people and things, found La Fayette 
of very dubious loyalty, and he doubted the aid of the 
Militia. He saw Fersen (the young fellow took for granted 
that Fersen was the Queen's lover) ; he saw him in Fersen's 
own house in the Faubourg St. Honore. They discussed 
the rottenness of the army, the unlikeliness of immediate 
foreign aid. It was decided to postpone the thing for 
three months. 

And meanwhile the Queen heard debated before her the 
alternatives of a flight to the frontier and of a domestic 
rising nearer Paris in defence of the Crown. She was by 
all her bent — and was increasingly to be — in favour of 
foreign support; but Mirabeau's counsel was something 
to her. At the end of February it prevailed, and La Marck 
came to Bouille at Metz with the news that Mirabeau's 
plan should be considered. Bouille agreed. There was 



i 



MIRABEAU 339 

to be no suggestion of flight : the Court's choice of the frontier 
was to be abandoned. Compiegne should be the goal of a 
short and determined march. The soldier rejoiced, as did 
Mirabeau, that a final decision had been made, that no near 
presence of foreign aid was expected, and that the idea of a 
flight to the frontier was given up. March, perhaps the 
close of it, was to see the thing done, and so with the spring 
was to be issued the challenge to civil war: then and then 
only, if necessary, might follow a retirement upon a fortress. 
The thing was dangerous and more dangerous. Mes- 
dames, the King's aunts, had left their country house at 
great pains for Italy : the populace had all but detained them. 
La Fayette, a month later, had disarmed certain gentlemen 
of the palace and had insisted that his Militia alone mount 
guard. It was certain, as March crept on, that the decision 
must soon be taken, and that the double power of Mirabeau 
over Court and Parliament could alone force the exit from 
Paris to a well-chosen town, and so decide the issue of a 
Restoration of the Monarchy now so grievously imperilled. 
Mirabeau still grew in power, still spoke in his loudest tones, 
still watched, and drove all his team of political dupes and 
Koyal clients, still remained strongly double. Swearing to 
one that he had all ready for the end of Monarchy if the 
King should fly; writing continually (and more sincerely) 
to another his plans in aid of such a flight; asking for 
yet more money (on the 2nd of March); urging a further 
double-dealing with the Assembly in a secret and verbal 
message to the King (on the 13th) ; betraying the Jacobins, 
his Jacobins, in a private letter (on the 21st). Doing 
all this with his intrigue fully formed, and the Royal 
Family already sheltered under the wing of that intrigue. 
Fate entered. 



340 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

It was on the 24th of March that Mirabeau wrote 
his last letter to La Marck. His friend had mining 
rights in the Kingdom: the new mining laws were 
down for debate that week. He promised to speak, 
and on the morning of the 27th he called on La 
Marck upon his way to the manege; he was faint 
and compelled to rest awhile upon a couch there, but he 
rallied and went on to the Parliament. It was Sunday. 
The streets were full of people; he was recognised, followed 
and cheered. 

Upon that 27th of March he spoke more than once: his 
ill ease was not apparent. On the 28th he was struck. 
But even so lying in his bed, for the next three days, in spite 
of an increasing agony, he made of his moments of respite 
occasions for set words, usually well chosen, pagan, proud, 
memorable, and a trifle affected. A crowd in the street 
without kept guard and silence. A crowd was about his 
bed continually. Talleyrand, reconciled, came; La Marck, 
who loved him, came repeatedly — and a hundred others. 
He spoke, and they spoke, of Death, as a matter for con- 
verse, often for jest. La Marck quizzed him: "Oh, you 
connoisseur of great death-beds ! " Talleyrand told him that 
he came "like the populace, to hear." A man who loved him 
said well, "that he acted death as a great actor upon a 
national stage." Astounding courage, and more astound- 
ing silence upon the thing he had never cared for or believed: 
all the greatness and all the void of the eighteenth century 
was here. He admitted God, however, and rallied his 
good doctor, a materialist — as then were all, and still 
are most, experts in viscera: the days were sunlit, 
and the sun reminded him of God. So for four days; 
upon the fifth day, the 2nd of April, at half-past eight 



MIRABEAU 341 

in the morning, those watching his last and silent agony, 
saw that he was dead. 



Many modern historians have said that the death of 
Mirabeau affected but little the plans that had been made 
for flight. 

It is an error. The death of Mirabeau changed all, and 
it was one more of those hammer-blows of Fate exactly 
coincident with the sequence of the Queen's weird. 

It is true that the flight was already long arranged. It is 
true that its very details were planned for the most part long 
before Mirabeau died. Nevertheless, had Mirabeau lived, 
the whole thing would have had a different issue; and for 
this reason, that Mirabeau dominated all that world — 
not only the world of the Court but also the world of Par- 
liament, and, in some indirect way, the world of Opinion as 
well — by Will. Any action that the Court had taken with 
Mirabeau alive and active would have been bent to Mira- 
beau's plan, and even if the flight had been, not (as he coun- 
selled) to Compiegne, but to Montmedy and the frontier, 
Mirabeau would have forced at once its success and a con- 
sequent civil war. He would have permitted no departure 
without being privy to it; he would have sworn, shouted, 
cajoled and persuaded doubly upon either side — for Mira- 
beau was a soldierly man; he had a plan and could use 
men by ordering. He could use them for the achievement 
of a fixed end which was now the salvation of the Monarchy; 
for he believed the Monarchy to be the skeleton and frame- 
work of France — and this creative light of the revolution 
around him seemed to him a mere mist and dazzle. Great 
a-s he wasj I repeat it, the Revolution 3eemed to him to 



342 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

be drifting towards an Anarchy. He was like a landsman 
who may be brave and domineering but who shudders when 
he first comes across the temper of the sea. 

But what might have happened is but hypothesis. For 
Mirabeau died; and Mirabeau once dead it was necessarily 
certain that the Court, left to itself, should attempt to preserve 
not Monarchy but merely the Court. Mirabeau living, that 
determination of theirs to save their bodies would have done 
no harm, and the eagerness of the Queen to get away to the 
neighbourhood of friends would have been used as human 
intelligence uses the instinct of animals. Mirabeau dead, that 
force ran ever along its own blind line, attempting merely to 
save the persons of the King and Queen and their children. 
Attempting so small a thing, it happened to fail. But on 
the failure or success of that attempt the largest things 
depended. 

It was, as we have seen, upon Saturday, the 2nd of April, 
that Mirabeau died, and had said in dying that there went 
with him the last shred of the Monarchy. 

The Sunday following his death was that upon which 
the Schismatic Priests said their first Masses in every par- 
ish of the city. 



I have not space to reiterate in this volume the vast 
issue involved. I have suflficiently emphasised and shall 
further emphasise the profound truth that every Civil 
Revolution is theological at bottom, because, at bottom, 
it must be based upon a divergence of philosophy between 
the philosophies of the old order and the new. A chance 
test of philosophy thrown at random into the Revolu- 
tionary movement had separated men suddenly and was 



MIRABEAU 343 

rifting the State asunder; for a fortnight Paris raged upon 
the Nationalisation of the Church. 

I will not detain the reader. There was here one of 
those double duties where the wisest get most bewildered 
and the most sincere go the furthest astray. Let the 
reader remember (difficult as it is to do so in the religious 
atmosphere of our time) that with the educated of that 
day Religion was dead — with the populace of Paris even 
more dead. The thing was a mere emblem. Its last 
little flickering light (which we have since seen to grow 
to so great a flame) was not comprehended, save as a polit- 
ical institution, by the great bulk of the Parliament, by the 
professions, by the workers; the very beggars in the street 
despised the Faith, and the shrines were empty. You 
were a priest or one of the very few Mass-goers ? Then 
you were suspected of supporting the old forms of civil 
polity! After the Civil Constitution of the Clergy you 
deliberately refused to take a reasonable oath to the Con- 
stitution and the new-born Liberty of Men ? Then you 
were a traitor, and a silly traitor at that. Let it be remem- 
bered that at this moment Religion had no warriors. All 
the vast rally of the nineteenth century was undreamt of. 
The bishops were place-hunters full of evil living;' the 
Creed an empty historic formula: a convention like the con- 
ventions of *' party'* in England to-day. The reader 
must see this, in spite of all the nineteenth century may 
have taught him to the contrary, or he will never see the 
Revolution. 

In such a crisis two factors, quite uncomprehended, 
stood like rocks — they were but small minorities : so are 
rocks small accidents in the general sea. The one was 

1 Consider !iiec, of Narboime. His mistress was his own niece. 



344 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

that little group of people who still practised the united 
Catholic Faith — and it just so happened that of these 
the King was one, his sister another, and, from the begin- 
nings in her light, easy way, latterly with increasing depth, 
his wife a third; the other factor was the mass of the hum- 
bler Clergy. They felt as by an instinct the note of unity; 
they refused to subscribe: to all, or nearly all, the bishops 
it was — for the most part — a matter of rank and policy 
to resist the Bill; to the two-thirds of the country Clergy 
to resist the Law was loyalty to our Lord. 

What the King felt in that quarrel we all know. Marie 
Antoinette, in spite of her devotion, was never able to 
neglect the human, the purely temporal, the vulgarly 
political aspect of the quarrel. Her husband, sincerely 
sympathetic though he was with the French temper, thought 
mainly of the Divine interests in the matter; though he 
thought slowly and badly, that was his thought. The 
populace, the politicians — all the world — saw nothing 
whatsoever in the Catholic resistance but a dodge devised 
by privilege to put a spoke in the wheel of the Revolution. 
And Paris especially, having for so long abandoned relig- 
ion, raged round the refusal of the priests. 

It is pitiful to read how small a rally the Faith could 
make! One chapel in all Paris was hired for the true 
Mass to be said therein, and handfuls here and there put 
forward a timid claim to approach the only altar which 
Rome acknowledged. I say it for the third or for the 
fourth time, to-day we cannot understand these things, 
for the Resurrection of the Catholic Church stands between 
us and them; but to this Paris on that Lenten Sunday, the 
3rd of April, 1791, the presence of the Schismatic Clergy, 
each in his parish, was a plain challenge launched against 



MIRABEAU 345 

the Crown, and it was nothing more: the attachment of 
the Court to the Roman Unity seemed to Paris a mere 
political intrigue, odious and unnational and stinking of 
treason. For a fortnight the Parisian anger raged, and 
the 17th of April was Palm Sunday. 

It has become a rule for those who are in communion 
with the Catholic Church that they should receive the 
Sacraments at least once a year, and that at Easter or there- 
abouts; a rule defined, if I am not mistaken, during the 
struggle with the Lutheran — that latest of the great heresies. 
This rule the King had satisfied, and on that Palm Sunday 
had taken Communion in his Chapel from a priest who 
had not sworn the Civic Oath. All the customary talk 
of some religious necessity by which he was in conscience 
compelled to leave Paris is balderdash. The attempt he 
made the next day, the Monday, to leave the city in order 
to spend the Easter days in the suburban palace of St. 
Cloud was purely political. Religion had no part therein. 
It cannot be determined to-day — unless indeed further 
evidence should come before us — how much the mere 
desire to prove a liberty of action on the part of the Court, 
how much a sort of challenge sure to be defeated, how 
much a hope that escape would be easier from a subur- 
ban point, entered into this plan; but it is quite certain 
that the Body of the Lord and His Resurrection had noth- 
ing whatsoever to do with it. And when upon Monday 
of Holy Week, the 18th of April, a little before noon, the 
royal family got into their carriage to drive, as was their con- 
stitutional right, to the neighbouring palace, those few miles 
away where the populace could not surround them, a crowd, 
organised as were these crowds of the Revolution, held them 
all around. The scene has been repeated too often to be 



346 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

repeated here ; one character marks it — it is one of profound 
importance. For the first time armed and disciplined force 
was wholly upon the side of the Revolution. 

The Militia which La Fayette had formed were with the 
people, and the common will of that great mob was present 
also in the men who bore arms. It had not been so in any 
of the movements antecedent to this, unless we admit the 
sharp national anger of the loose and almost civilian "French 
Guards" against the hired German Cavalry in July, 1789. 
Hitherto there had been a distinction between the people at 
large and that portion of the people which was armed and 
disciplined, a distinction which now broke down because 
to the French temper on this Monday of Holy Week, 1791, 
the issue was too grave for such distinctions. The national 
King must be kept in Paris, the people would not let him 
leave, much as a man will not let his money go out of his 
sight or out of his control. 

Let it be noted that here, as is invariably the case through- 
out the history of the French people, the general mass had 
easily learned a secret thing: all the bamboozlement had 
failed — as it is failing to-day in spite of the financial press, 
the Secret Societies, and every other instrument of fraud. 
The vast crowd which hustled round the King's carriage 
knew and freely repeated his project of invasion which had 
now been so carefully and, as it was thought, so secretly 
plotted for six months. 

The French people are accustomed to, and have, as it 
were, an appetite for, duels in the dark where one of the two 
combatants must die. There was determination upon 
the one side — without proof — that the King desired to 
fly and must be restrained. There was determination 
upon the other — accompanied by frequent denial — that 



MIRABEAU 347 

the King should escape to the French frontier and 
should be free. 

Not the next day, but the day after, Wednesday in Holy 
Week, the Queen, the Queen herself pulled the trigger. 
All that blind force of desire for the mere personal safety of 
her family, which Mirabeau would have controlled, but 
which in her unguided hands was an unreasoning torrent, 
impelled her action. She wrote to Mercy that her very life 
was in danger and that the business must be done with next 
month at the latest. She mentioned the place of flight, 
Montmedy. 

Eight weeks followed, during which every effort of the 
royal family was directed to the achievement of a mere flight. 

The limits of these pages do not permit me the many 
details which could make of that early summer a long book 
of intrigue. When the thing had failed each had his excuses, 
and Bouille would have it that with a docile obedience on 
the part of the Court he could have saved the Court. It 
may be argued that if the King had gone by way of Rheims 
he would have escaped. It may be argued that the delay of 
twenty-four hours (which certainly did take place) made 
such and such a difference. All these arguments fall to 
the ground when it is considered that the King did escape 
from Paris, escaped easily along the road to the frontier, 
was safe and trebly safe until, as will be seen, two accidents, 
wholly incalculable and each a clear part of Fate, broke 
that immemorial Crown of the French Monarchy. The 
first (as will be seen) was the error — if it was an error — 
made by young Choiseul on the Chalons road — a mere 
mechanical one; the second — much more miraculous — 
was the ride of Droaet, galloping in a dark night under 
a covered moon wildly through the very difficult ridge way 



348 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

of Argonne, and even that miracle only just came off by 
fifteen minutes. It was not delay, whether of twenty-four 
hours or of a fortnight which brought them back to Paris. 
It was that other force for which we have no name, but which 
one may call if one likes. Necessity or Something Written. 

Fersen, who loved the Queen and whom the Queen loved, 
had stood in the centre of the plot, had seen all the con- 
spirators, and brought to its climax everything. He was 
now to risk his life. The great travelling-carriage called 
a berline (which easily held three people upon either side), 
was waiting in its shed in the stables of the house he had 
hired, as the summer solstice — a date fatal to the Bourbons 
— was approached. Fersen himself in disguise was to 
drive them, disguised also, from their palace by night in a 
cab to where that travelling -coach awaited them. Their 
passports were ready; the children's governess, the Duch- 
ess of Tourzel, was to play the part of the chief personage 
and to be called the Baroness of Korff. The Queen was to 
be the governess of her children, and the King her valet, his 
sister a maid; the children were to be Madame de Korff' s 
children, and the Dauphin was dressed as a girl and called 
by a girl's name. 

There are a few square yards in Paris which should be 
famous in history. Here Joan of Arc fell in her failure to 
force the Western gate of the city. Here to-day is the hotel 
called the Hotel de Normandie, frequented by foreigners, 
and opposite is a money-changer's booth. Here the Rue 
St. Hon ore crosses the Rue de I'Echelle. There* at mid- 

» To be accurate, the exact spot was a few steps to the south of the present crossing, and much about the 
middle of the modem Rue de I'Echelle, and opposite No. 6 of that street. 





^,„^'U^ '^*^'*''^.'2^^«^^, ,<.<^<^ ^^^ ^'^ 

j^ ^-.w. <i^.-/ i.^.M-'Hf^^, 2„ ,^„:;~., ^■A'i -w^ 

FACSIMILE OF FIRST PAGE OF THE ADDRESS TO THE " 
FRENCH PEOPLE 

Written by Louis XVI. before his flight 



MIRABEAU 349 

night on the 20th of June, Fersen, dressed as a coachman, 
was waiting with his cab to drive them to the travelling-coach 
which awaited them at the eastern boundary of the city. 
He had already visited the palace to make all sure. His 
disguise was good, his acting excellent. His love compelled 
him. He took snuff with the other cabbies. He waited 
resignedly. The lights went out, midnight approached, 
and first one, then another of certain beings approached him 
down the dark alley that led from the courtyards of the 
palace. The King came, and the Royal children, their 
governess, and the King's sister. Last of all, and after some 
delay, the Queen. All of them had escaped safely from 
what was the chief barrier around them all — the Militia 
Guard. When they were well in their cab, Fersen, that 
devoted man, drove them in a leisurely manner to the gates 
of the city, found the berline drawn up on the highroad, and 
with it two Gentlemen of the Guard who had come, dis- 
guised in old yellow liveries, to act as postilions, while a third 
had ridden on to the first post-house. Fersen had the berline 
driven by his servants, himself upon the box, and so reached, 
in that earliest of all dawns of the year, the first post and 
relay, the suburban post-house of Bondy. 

There was light in the North . He saw before him at that 
hour the free road to the frontier; the country and the 
simple minds of subjects; the happy past returning; the end 
at last of all that Parisian fever, and the chastisement per- 
haps of all that Parisian violence — at any rate, the solution 
of the whole affair. His friend was free. 



The King had but to reach the garrisons of the east, 
and Austria would move, the last of the regular French 



350 



MARIE ANTOINETTE 



armies would advance: now that the royal person was no 
more in danger from such a march, the march on Paris 
would begin. 

But it was the summer solstice, a moment ill-omened to 
the Bourbons. 



XIV 
VARENNES 

FROM MIDNIGHT OF MONDAY, JUNE 20, 1791. TO JUST AFTER SEVEN 
ON THE EVENING OF SATURDAY, JUNE 25, 1791 

IT was no longer night; it was near day, the brighten- 
ing air smelt of morning. The links of the harness- 
chains clattered a little as the relay horses were 
backed against the pole of the big carriage. Fersen saun- 
tered to the carriage window of that side upon which the 
Queen sat. He called out loudly her supposed mistress's 
assumed name, *' Madame Korff," saluted her and turned 
to go on his lonely cross-country ride to Bourget and the 
Brussels road, by which he also purposed to fly. But, 
even as he turned, they say that she held his hand a 
moment and slipped upon his finger a ring. It was a ring 
of yellowish gold, broad and heavy, and having set in it 
an unknown stone. It is still preserved. Here is the story 
of the ring : — 

It was again the 20th of June — the summer solstice 
that strikes, and strikes again, and again at the Bourbons 
and at the soldiers of the Bourbons. Nineteen years had 
passed since the dawn when Fersen had left the Queen at 
Bondy, seventeen since he had broken his heart at her 
death, and had become silent. His campaigns had for- 
bidden him to show prematurely the effect of advancing age ; 
indeed, as men now count age, he had not reached the 

351 




English Milu 







PARIS 



2. 



CHATEAU THIERRY 



^Jiar^^^^^., 



Paiot when Commissioners 
met the Royal Family 
on theJr return 




\Znaintry 
Vew Embankment 



Montmira 




\^^i^- ;^!VA^^o MOHTMCOr 
^ '';^ar,enne! 

Hill Forest of ^ if^-'^Jk , 
Argonne ^''i£-''^?^^3 



. - Jt House ^-'-ii-'- ;„' -- ^ - .,- . _ ; ^ I? 

ofOrbeyaJ ^'-SL." -''vS--^ V- 6^ 




MAP OF THE FLIGHT TO VAEENNES AND THE KETXJKN 

352 



VARENNES 353 

limits of decline — his fifty-fifth year was not accomplished. 
. . . But emotions so inhuman and so deep had so torn 
him in his vigour that there had followed a complete and an 
austere silence of the soul: he had long seemed apart from 
living men. His face preserved a settled severity, his eyes 
a contempt for the final moment of danger: that moment 
had come. 

He was Marshal of the Forces ; the populace of Stockholm 
was in rumour, for the North still had vigour in it, impreg- 
nated from France. He had been torn from his carriage, 
chased from the refuge of a room, and now stood bleeding 
on the steps of the Riddenholm alone (the Squires were 
within the church, barricaded: they had left him outside 
to die). The populace, hating him, hated even more a 
ring which they saw large and dull upon his finger, for 
they said among themselves that the ring was Faery, and 
that death issued from its gem whenever it was held for- 
ward; Death flashed from it and struck whomsoever it was 
turned upon. Charles Augustus himself had seen it upon 
parade; it had lowered upon him, and he had fallen dead 
from his horse. . . . Fersen, so standing, wounded and 
alone, with the mob roaring round the steps, held his sword 
drawn in his right hand — but the ring upon his left was a 
better weapon, and no one dared come forward. 

At last a traitor (since there is a traitor in every tragedy) , 
a servant of his who had turned "fisherman, drew other 
fishermen round him and whispered to them to gather 
stones : thus, from a distance, standing upon the steps above 
them, Fersen was stoned and died. 

When he was quite dead the populace drew round his 
body, but they would not go too near, and even as they 
approached they shielded their eyes from the ring. But 



354 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

this traitor, Zaffel, bolder than the rest, went forward also 
with an axe, and, shielding his eyes also, he hacked the 
finger off. The people cheered as they would cheer a man 
that had plucked a fuse from a shell. He ran, with his head 
still turned, to the riverside, and he threw the finger with 
the Queen's ring upon it far out into the stream. 

Next day Stockholm was as calm as though there had 
been no evening tumult. Zaffel at early morning took his 
boat out upon the cold lake water by a pleasant breeze, and 
pointed up river: he had a plan to fish. When he had left 
the many islands of the town behind him and had passed 
into a lonely reach of pine-trees, he felt a gentle shock upon 
the keel, and the boat stood still. . . . He went forward to 
the bows and looked over; he could see nothing but very deep 
green water bubbling below. As he came back aft the 
masthead caught his eye, and there, clasping it, was a 
severed hand; the blood which was apparent at the wrist 
was not running. The hand grasped the trunk of the mast 
with rigour, and Zaffel, as he saw it, shuddered, for one 
finger of that hand was gone. 

The boat went forward in spite of the tide and aslant 
the wind, with the sheet loose and the sail at random, and 
he in the boat could feel for hours that the impulsion of 
its course was from the masthead to which he no longer 
dared look upwards. The boat cut steadily across the 
eddies of the Moelar. At times he tried the tiller, but he 
found the fixed movement unresponsive to his helm. 

There is no darkness in the North at this season, but 
a twilight which, if there are clouds, fades from the grey 
of evening to the grey of dawn; he had sat cold, crouching 
in the stern of his boat, throughout all the hours of the day, 
and now this grey twilight was upon him. In the midst 



VARENNES 355 

of it he saw far up-stream a white rock from which, 
as it seemed to him, some phosphorescence glowed unnatural, 
and in the midst of that light, upon a ledge of the stone, was 
the ring. He took it, as at a command; then at last he 
dared look up at the masthead. He saw the hand, now 
whole, relax and change and disappear, and he felt the boat 
go free, turn and drift down stream. 

When he was back upon the quays of Stockholm, all his 
body trembling with a fast of twenty-four hours and with 
the cold of the morning, his neighbours, as they caught 
the mooring rope, asked questions of him. He answered 
them with meaningless songs, and then, as the vision 
returned, with pointings and terror. He was mad. 

They took him off to the Bethel beyond the stream. 
On the Knights' Island, within the church of Riddenholm, 
the Squires who had deserted Fersen upon the day before 
were at that moment gathered round the coffin to do hon- 
our to his burial; and upon the pall they noticed (some cur- 
ious, some indifferent) the broad band of yellowish gold 
and the unknown stone. 

When it came to the burial, the grave-diggers dared not 
put it into earth as they should have done; they gave it to 
his family. With them it still remains, to do evil and dis- 
turb his sleep. 



From Bondy the great carriage went forward under the 
growing light of the day. At Claye a cabriolet with the 
Queen's waiting women joined them and followed the 
berline. That increasing light forbade the family to sleep; 
they settled in comfort upon the broad and padded seats of 
white velvet, leaning back into them, and every word they 



356 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

said revealed the enlarging confidence of their souls. The 
King felt himself already upon horseback; the Queen and 
the Duchess repeated the roles they were to play on what- 
ever little public occasions the rapid journey might involve 
them in. The Duchess as Madame Korff, in whose name 
the transport had been made out; the Queen as her gover- 
ness — and so forth. They went rapidly in that mixed 
landscape of wood and market-garden, and half -continuous 
village which still marks the confines of Paris and of the 
influence of Paris. Now they were in the open country, 
with Paris quite forgotten, now in a district with a dialect 
of its own — sure test of honesty and of freedom. The 
countrysides were awake, the mowers were in the field, 
the road was down among the narrow pastures of the 
Marne, and at last in Meaux, where for the first time they 
halted for a relay. 

So near to Paris, the wealthy equipage and its suite 
attracted no curiosity, while prudence still restrained the 
travellers from showing themselves in the market-square, 
fatigued as they may already have been by a continuous 
travelling of now over five hours — for it was past six 
and the town was astir by the time the berline and the 
cabriolet had rumbled in. To this concurrence of good 
accidents the neighbourhood of the capital added another 
element, for the posting station of Meaux was so used to the 
continual passage of considerable travellers (how many of 
the emigrants had it not re-harnessed!) that not only was 
the whole place incurious, but also the relay was rapidly 
effected. It was not a quarter of an hour before they were 
off again upon the Chalons road. 

By the route they had chosen, which had the advantage 
that it was somewhat shorter and, what was of even more 



VARENNES 357 

importance, less frequented than the main way through 
Chateau Thierry and Epernay, the distance before them to 
Chalons, the next large town, was somewhat over seventy 
miles. It would fill the whole morning and more. They 
fell to talking to one another with some little anxiety as to 
what might happen when Chalons, with its considerable 
population, its newspaper and its activity, was reached. 
But their immunity at Meaux, the advent of a pleasing, 
shaded and tolerable day, the remote countrysides through 
which they passed after branching off the main road at 
La Ferte, dulled their fears, or rather exorcised them. 
They fell to eating — a sort of picnic without plates, cutting 
their meat upon their bread, and drinking their wine from 
a cup passed round. No sunlight fell upon the green 
blind of the off-side window to fatigue their eyes ; no reflec- 
tions of excessive heat as the morning rose shone from the 
road upon the white velvet of the cushions: they were in 
comfort and at ease. 

By eight they were upon the side-road they had chosen; 
by ten, at the hour when the peasants were reposing under 
the high quadruple rank of roadside trees, with their scythes 
at rest beside them, they came to the post of Viels-Maisons. 
They were behind their hour — a trifle — but they were 
by this time quite secure in mind. The governess had given 
the children air, and had walked with them up the long 
hill by which the road leaves the Marne valley. The pace 
had been hardly business-like, perhaps to save fatigue; the 
King had sauntered from the carriage more than once, 
to stretch his legs at the post-houses; there were even occa- 
sions upon which he had spoken to the little groups of 
peasants that surrounded the carriage as the new horses 
were put in. For a moment, indeed, some anxiety — • 



358 



MARIE ANTOINETTE 



very probably baseless — had arisen amongst them at 
sight of a horseman who seemed to be following the car- 
riages; the children and their governess, who were on the 
back seat, had noticed a rider far down the road behind 
them, but he turned off and was seen no more. 

In the stables of Viels-Maisons was a postilion of the 
name of Picard; his action is worthy of note to anyone 
who would comprehend the nature of this journey, the emo- 
tions which it aroused in those who witnessed it, and the 
tangle of authority amid which the flight was driven. His 
action is worthy of note, especially to those who would see, 
as it is necessary to see, the Champenois peasantry who form 
the background of all the picture. He first, at this long dis- 
tance from Paris, fifty miles and more, recognized the King. 

Sketch Map oT the Road from 

IS TO VARi 

June 21st. 1791 




CLERMONT 



SOMMEVCSUC 
CHALONS 
tHAINTRIX 



PARIS 






He might have sold the knowledge; he might have gam- 
bled on the royal family's success, have whispered his 
recognition, and have waited for his reward. He might 
have presupposed the final success of the National Gov- 
ernment, and have taken immediate steps to earn its grati- 
tude by denouncing the King: This peasant did none of 
these three things. He held his tongue. 

The carriages rolled onward. At midday when, at 
one of the posting stations in that great bare, dusty plain, 
an isolated place, the King had strolled out again, in thQ 



VARENNES 359 

interval of the harnessing, to joke with a knot of poor 
yokels ^nd to give charity to them, Monstier, one of the 
Guards who were acting as drivers, ventured a timid 
remonstrance, and Louis said what should never be said 
within the hearing of the gods — that he was now safe 
from all accidents. When he had said this he continued 
to talk to the poor about him: he talked of their crops 
and of the hay that he saw" tedding. 

It is possible that some one of these wondered a little 
overmuch at the grand people; it is possible there had been 
rumours: but if any beggar or mower among them guessed, 
he also held his tongue — and the carriages rolled onward. 



The day, still veiled and moderate, was at its height; 
it was two o'clock, or a little later, when the road which had 
hitherto borne every mark of age, took on the appearance 
of new work, the line of trees was interrupted, and the stones 
of the kerb were clean and freshly sawn. A green valley, 
then but imperfectly drained, though but slightly below 
the general level of the Champagne, lay across its course. 
. An older track had skirted this marshy land, but 
for now six years the road had cut straight across the doubt- 
ful soil upon a great embankment, which was one of those 
new engineering works of which the reign, for all its financial 
embarrassment, had been full. Upon this embankment 
stood (and stands) the posting-house, and upon such a site 
little else could stand. There were at that time but two 
other roofs: a blacksmith's forge and a tavern. The 
post was called *'the Petit Chaintry"; it is Chaintrix to-day, 
and a hamlet still. Here lived an elderly man, Lagny, a 
widower, with his daughters and one son-in-law, by name 



S60 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

Vallet, a dangerous lad, for he had travelled, and had 
been himself brought up in the noise and curiosity of an 
inn; nay, he had seen Paris, and had marched with the 
Federals upon the Champs de Mars the year before. Only 
rarely did Vallet visit his wife's home — ^but there is a fate and 
a God. In this lonely plain of Champagne where no one 
travels, where few then knew Paris, even, let alone the 
Court, this man happened on that one day to be at the 
stables of his father-in-law's posting-house; he happened 
also to be by nature — the nature of a townsman — ^garrulous 
and touched with melodrama. He recognised and wor- 
shipped the King. From that moment the secret was 
dissolved — and in loyalty perhaps half an hour was 
consumed. 

No record remains of the spreading of the news, but 
proof remains of the result. Vallet insisted on riding him- 
self upon the leaders; he rode hard, and twice he let his 
horses down, breaking harness ; so that an hour perhaps was 
lost by his hard riding. Before even the berline and its 
attending cabriolet left Chaintry, Lagny and his daughters 
had been told. The royal family had not denied the 
recognition; they had even, in reward for the loyalty 
displayed, bestowed gifts upon the innkeeper. It 
is certain that the news must have spread through the 
countryside. 

In such an atmosphere of recognition, nay, of open depen- 
dence upon the loyalty of those who knew them, they trav- 
ersed the remaining twelve miles of road and entered 
Chalons, where alone they feared arrest and in whose 
crowds only detailed forethought and plan could have 
preserved them unknown. That plan and that forethought 
had been wholly absent; a vague instinct of its necessity 



VARENNES 361 

had in the morning haunted the fears of the travellers, but 
now, after the safety and isolation of the many long hours 
from Meaux, it was forgotten. 

They entered the big town at four o'clock; the two carri- 
ages drove clattering through its streets ; they pulled up at the 
posting-house in the Rue St. Jacques. Viet, the post-master 
came out to see to the horses. A crowd gathered, and to every 
one in that crowd and to Viet, and to any one of the town 
who cared to ask, the presence of the King was perfectly 
well known. It was discussed with approval or disapproval; 
indeed, the journey would have ended here, but that Viet 
himself, true to the character of the peasant (for he was 
peasant-born), refused all risk. Officially he knew noth- 
ing; he would neither detain nor speed the King; he was 
obstinately silent. Whether Louis won, or his enemies, 
he, at least, would be safe. 

As he was buckling the last of the fresh horses, a man 
dressed with care and with some appearance of wealth, 
approached him, and insisted upon what was, by the Con- 
stitution, his duty, but Viet gave him no change and was 
still silent. The man dressed with care and with some 
appearance of wealth, failing to move this very minor 
functionary, went off to the Mayor, Chorez by name; 
there was no time to lose; horses are unharnessed and others 
harnessed in but a little delay. The Mayor was as silent 
as Viet: he took refuge in that common excuse of tem- 
porisers and cowards — he demanded "proof." It is prob- 
able that the well-dressed man with some appearance of 
wealth went off upon the frontier road. We do not know, 
for we do not even know his name; but when a little before 
five o'clock the berline had halted a moment at the foot 
of a rise, surely it was the same man who passed it rapidly 



362 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

and muttered to the royal family as he passed: "You 
have planned ill!" 

The town of Chalons lies upon the border of an exten- 
sive plain peculiar in French history. Here, as tradition 
will have it, Attila's army was destroyed by the Romans 
and the Barbarians whom the Romans had trained. 
It is a wide and desolate space, which the prosperity suc- 
ceeding the Revolution has transformed, but which, as we 
watch it to-day from a distant height, still bears something 
of its ancient poverty — to the eye, at least — so level is it 
and so treeless. Far off to the eastward runs the wooded 
wall of Argonne, very faint and small; at the base of this, 
the town of Ste. Menehould. 

From Chalons to Ste. Menehould, by the straight road 
bridging the plain, is a long day's march, twenty-five 
miles or more: and there is very little between. The pas- 
sage of this bare, direct and dusty stretch was, the fugitives 
might imagine, the very last and the least of the risks they 
were to run. Chalons, which alone they feared, had not 
detained them, the emptiness of the countryside renewed, 
or rather rendered absolute their confidence. Within an hour 
they would be at the bridge of Somme-Vesle, an utterly 
deserted spot, with nothing but the stables of the post to 
mark it. 



At this point of their successful journey let the reader 
note in what order the guarding of the flight had been con- 
ceived by Bouille. 

The first stages of it — till beyond Chalons — were to be 
quite bare of soldiery, lest suspicion should arise and Paris 
receive the alarm; but once well past Chalons, the hundred 



VARENNES 363 

miles and more accomplished, small posts of cavalry, 
mostly German mercenaries, were to be placed upon one 
pretext and another, at intervals along the way, until at 
VarenneSy Bouille's own son should meet the fugitives 
with his troop, and eastward from Varennes the remain- 
ing miles to Montmedy, which was their goal, they would 
need no special guard ; they would be in the thick of Bouille's 
army. The first of these small posts was one of German 
mercenary Hussars under the Due de Choiseul, a nephew 
of the old statesman of Louis XV. It was to expect the 
King at Somme-Vesle at 07ie — giving as its excuse for its 
presence escort for a convoy of bullion — but an exact 
keeping of the time-table was urgently necessary, for it 
would be perilous for the foreign troops to hang about 
indefinitely in these eastern villages. 

It was at the lonely post-house of Somme-Vesle, then, 
that the first soldiers were to be looked for by the King; 
there, as it had been arranged, the first Hussars would 
be seen, posted upon the lonely road; these would close up 
immediately behind the carriage for a body-guard. With 
each succeeding stage of the shortening trial troop after 
troop would join that barrier and increase it. Dragoons 
at Ste. Menehould, more at Clermont, till, before the eve- 
ning gathered, the Royal Family would have between them 
and the National Government of Paris or the young patriots 
of the villages of the Marne, a guard of their own soldiers, 
an escort warding them into the heart of the frontier army 
that was to be their salvation. 

The hour passed quickly — it was not yet six, when the 
King, who had watched with his old interest in maps 
every detail of the road, and had followed it with the guide- 
book upon his knee, heard the brake upon the wheels; 



364 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

a slight descent ended, and the carriage drew up. A long 
farmhouse, with stable door and garden gate shut tight 
and with no head at a window, stood, French fashion, all 
along the kerb. They looked from the window, noted the 
desertion of the fields, the silence of the house, and the broad 
paved way, and asked with a growing anxiety what they 
feared to know, the name of the place. 

The third Gentleman of the Guard, Valory, who had at 
each stage gone before them to have the horses ready, 
came to the door and told them it was the posting-house 
of Somme-Vesle: of soldiers not a sign; a few peasants, 
slouching off to the fields. 



Long before the King, with his delays of loyalty and his 
breakdowns, had reached Chalons, just upon three, under 
that veiled sky and upon a dip of that monotonous, dead 
straight, white road, close to the bridge and posting-house of 
Somme-Vesle, half a troop of Hussars were up and mounted. 
They were Germans, but their foreign gutterals were not 
heard by the sleepy ostlers of the place, for, in some dis- 
order, the little knot of mounted men were at attention. 
At their head, upon his finer horse, sat Choiseul, and with 
him Aubriot, a lieutenant of Dragoons, and old Goguelat, 
used to commissariat, to organization, and to plans. They 
pointed westward up the Chalons road, looking along 
its right line between the parallel perspective of its trees. 
Choiseul especially strained his eyes to see whether no ris- 
ing dust or no distant specks of a large vehicle and a cabriolet 
following might announce the advent of the King, but there 
was no sign upon the road. He had so sat his horse for hours. 

It was eleven when his light travelling-carriage had 



VARENNES 365 

trotted up to the stables,' his German soldiery had joined 
him before noon, and by one, as the time-table of the plan 
had been given him, the berline should have been there. 

Two o'clock passed. An anxious hour of waiting brought 
no news. Yet another hour of growing anxiety upon the 
soldiers' part, of growing suspicion in the inn. And now 
it was three o'clock; but there was no sign upon the road. 

Already the hoofs of these fifty mercenaries had been 
clattering and pawing for three hours and more round and 
about the long white wall of the posting -house. The 
ostlers, the few and sleepy ostlers, were not fond of such 
visitors, nor were the peasants in the fields. 

De Choiseul had much to think about beside the punc- 
tuality of the fugitives as he sat his horse there, straining 
his eyes along the road. The people of the place had 
asked him familiar^, in the new revolutionary manner, 
what this body of horse was for. They might have added: 
"Why was it foreign, mercenary horse .^" Such a ques- 
tion was certainly implied. . . . Why had an army of 
the frontiers thrown out a point of its cavalry-screen towards 
its base against all the known rules of war, instead of 
towards the frontier which it was to line and defend ? 
. . . If it was for orders or for manoeuvring, why did 
they stick close to this one posting-house ? . . . Troops, 
even unsuspected troops, had been known to comman- 
deer food-stuffs without payment: and the peasantry 
were sullen. 

All these things were passing in the minds of the French 
peasants there, and Choiseul, who was also French, knew 
what was passing through their minds. There was some- 

' He had come from Paris, where he had made the last arrangements, and with him and in his carriage he 
had brought Leonard, the Queen's hairdresser. This garrulous fellow he had sent forward down the road 
to Montm&iy, and his mysterious hints at important secrets did much to spread the news. 



366 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

thing more: the countryside was armed. The Revolu- 
tion had made of every village a tiny, ill-trained but fur- 
nished military post; of every market town a section with 
two guns and a team of gunners; of every city a rough 
volunteer garrison, with ammunition and with arms, without 
discipline for a campaign, but in a momentary scuffle pos- 
sessed of the power to wound. 

Had even this been all, what Choiseul did might not have 
been done ; but it was not all. There had always been present 
in the minds of these officers upon the frontier the per- 
manent indecision of fears of the King. The date of the 
flight had been postponed and postponed. Choiseul him- 
self, who had been in Paris with the King twenty-four 
hours before, was aware of that indecision and those fears. 

It was three, and half -past three, and later; it was four — 
and still nothing appeared. The road still lay empty and 
silent; the posting-house became, if possible, a trifle more 
curious; the group of peasantry increased: the men were 
hustled. Why did not these foreign soldiers unsaddle.^ 
What was the urgency ? Choiseul had his reply ready, his 
casual piece of news: "They were expecting treasure, and 
he was ordered to furnish an escort." Why, then, let them 
trot up the road to meet it ! . . . With every quarter of 
an hour the strain grew greater. 

Four o'clock passed, and half-past four. It was for 
Choiseul to judge exactly (as it has been for how many 
another soldier commanding thousands where he com- 
manded fifty) beyond what point resistance would mean 
disaster. From time to time a peasant crossed a distant 
field, bearing, perhaps, a message to his armed peers; from 
time to time an ostler would ask a question of one of the 
Hussars and disappear; bearing, perhaps, a message of his 



VARENNES 367 

own, and Choiseul thought, *'If the country was raised 
behind him, in Argonne, the King is cut off and lost! " 

Among so many Germans a French soldier was easier of 
approach. The post-master of the place, lounging by, made 
up to speak to Aubriot. What he said was this: "So the 
King is expected to pass ? ... At least, the people 
are saying so." . . . He sauntered away. 

It was near five. By Choiseul's watch it was a trifle 
later still. The situation could no longer be borne, and 
the moment for retreat had come. Ten to one the King 
had not started after all. 

As Choiseul left he saw that fresh horses were put into his 
travelling-carriage ; he ordered into it his valet and the 
Queen's hair-dresser, Leonard, whom he had brought from 
Paris; he gave them a note which said that it had been 
necessary for him to abandon Somme-Vesle, and that, more- 
over, he doubted if the Treasure would come that day. 
He himself was going to rejoin the General, and new orders 
must be issued on the morrow. This note was to be shown 
to the ofl&cer in command at Ste. Menehould, and given 
to the oflScer in command at Clermont. Thence they were 
to post for Montmedy. This note written and handed, 
open, to his valet and Leonard, Choiseul saw the carriage 
go; and when he had seen it well away he turned rein, 
ordered his weary Germans, and bent reluctantly eastward 
along the road which his command had traversed that 
morning. 

So they rode back till, at Orbeval, Choiseul took a guide, 
crossed Neuville Bridge and plunged into Argonne, lest 
by following the highroad right into Ste. Menehould they 
might raise that alarm which at every cost it was his duty 
to allay. ... In vain. The country was already 



368 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

awake: that rumour, that something in the air which no 
historian has ever traced, had preceded him, and a woman 
in Ste. Menehould had said to a soldier in a tavern that '*the 
King would pass that way." 

In this way was the post of Somme-Vesle abandoned. 
It was in the neighbourhood of half-past five when the 
cavalry marched out and up the slight eastern slope of the 
road; just hidden by the brow of hill behind them as they 
left the spot where they had waited it for so long, the King's 
berline had begun the last climb before the descent to the 
post-house. Fifteen minutes economised on the Royal 
Family's delays would have saved them. 



The berline waited, as it had waited so often that day; 
the horses were changed in as humdrum a fashion. Within 
the carriage a doubt had fallen on the fugitives. . . . 
It was a lonely house in a lonely dip of the plain with a 
vast, straight, empty road rising upon either slope before 
it and beyond. They drove on to Orbeval, but in a mood 
now changed; they passed Orbeval and approached the long 
hill-forest of Argonne. 

It was already full evening; the clouds upon the western 
horizon had lifted; the reddening and descending sun 
shone for the first time that day against the rise of the 
Argonne woodland ridge and upon the bare, rolling folds 
of corn-land and of mown pasture at its base. 

Under the level shafts of that sunset the belated berline 
approached Ste. Menehould. They passed the lonely 
tavern upon the height called "At the Sign of the Moon"; 
they saw for a moment upon their left a mill not yet grown 
famous, the mill of Valmy; the shadows lengthened, and 



VARENNES 369 

just as the sun disappeared they rattled full speed into the 
main square of the town. 

The green blinds were up to admit the cool of the even- 
ing. The Queen looked from her window, without conceal- 
ment, and saw the gossiping and curious crowd which a 
French town collects upon its public place at the end of day. 
She saw the soldiers — some of them, she thought, saluted; she 
saw their officer. He came up and addressed her respect- 
fully, in his garlic-accent of Beam. He certainly saluted 
fully, and she bowed her acknowledgment of the salute. 
She saw and heard no more, unless perhaps she saw, on 
the King's side and through the open window of it, a young 
man still heavy with the swagger of the dragoons (for he had 
served), and still insolent with the brave insolence of sol- 
diers; clear in eye, hooked in nose, bronzed, short, 
alert and, as it were, itchi,ng for adventure. If she did 
see this figure, she saw it for but a moment: the horses were 
in, the whips were cracking, the carriage was on the move: 
he had thus for a moment passed her window, coming in 
from the fields, where he had been mowing; he had passed 
for a moment, and was gone. It was Drouet, the acting 
post-master of the place, and the son of the old post-master. 
He had noted that the yellow coach was huge and heavy; 
he had found just time to say to his postilions, "Don't 
kill the cattle"; then he had gone off: it was but a moment 
of time. 

They were off, a top-heavy haystack of a thing, rolling 
full speed up the hill beyond the river, and right into the 
advancing darkness. As they went, rising high with the 
road, through the orchards and into the forest and the 
hills, they heard, far behind them one pistol shot, and then 
another, the distant noise of a crowd, high voices, and the 



370 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

shuffling of horse-hoofs. But the cries grew fainter, and 
they had soon left all far behind. They gained the com- 
plete silence of the high wood, under the stars. They 
began the ascent of Argonne. 

But already in Ste. Menehould all was known. The 
girl who had said "It was the King," was now but one of 
many. The popular Council had met, and hardly had it 
met, and hardly had the crowd outside in the square appre- 
ciated the rumour, when those came in from Neuville 
village who had an hour or two before watched the move- 
ment of Choiseul and his Hussars, and the retirement of 
the cavalry over the bridge of Neuville into the forest, seek- 
ing Varennes. Their report added certitude to the gen- 
eral clamour: "Choiseul and his Hussars had hung about 
the posting-house of Somme-Vesle for hours!" "They had 
taken a guide and were in the woods behind Ste. Menehould 
at that moment." The troops in Ste. Menehould itself 
must have the same purpose. There was no doubt at all 
it was the King. And to this news there was added news, 
that Choiseul and his Hussars were keeping in touch with 
the main road, scouting back from time to time, ready and 
watching. 

The handful of cavalry at Ste. Menehould were French, 
not German. When Leonard had passed through, half an 
hour before, and had shown Choiseul's note to the officer 
in command, that Captain had bid his men unsaddle and 
take their ease. They were now filled with the evening's 
fraternity and wine. There was an attempt to gather them 
against the townspeople. It failed. And as the twilight les- 
sened one resolution after another was taken in the Town 
Hall, with the rapidity that marked the action of the Revo- 
lution everywhere, from Paris to the smallest village. The 



VARENNES 371 

municipal drum beating and the tocsin noisy against the 
hills, vote after vote proceeded. The Captain of the troop 
was arrested; the troop itself disarmed. The despatch of a 
courier to pursue and intercept the King was decided, 
and that courier chosen and named. 

It was upon young Drouet, for his horsemanship and his 
courage, that the choice fell. He took with him a com- 
panion, Guillaume, an innkeeper, such as he himself was, 
once a dragoon, as he himself had been; they saddled the 
last two horses left in the stable and thundered off up the 
long hill that rises from the town into Argonne, down the 
sharp ravine of the Islettes and onward along the great 
eastern road — the road to Metz — whither all thought the 
King was bound. An hour ahead of them on that same 
road rattled the cabriolet and rolled the huge berline. 

There was a moon, but the clouds covered her. The 
darkness of this, the shortest night of the year, deepened 
for its brief hours, but there was still a glow in the north as 
they neared, towards ten o'clock, the post of Clermont. 
Drouet heard voices in the darkness before him; it was 
his own postilions on their way back from the end of the 
stage, and Drouet hailing them heard that the travellers, 
when the relay horses w^ere harnessed, had given the order 
to leave the main Metz road, and to turn up northward 
to Varennes. 

The military temper of this people! The halt had 
not lasted a moment, but in the moment Drouet had formed 
his plan. 

He had not, it seemed, a stern chase before him, a mere 
gallop up the Metz road. The quarry had doubled and along 
its tracks w^ere Guards. There were troops at Clermont 
as there had been at Ste. Menehould; there would now be 



372 



MARIE ANTOINETTE 



troops every few miles until the headquarters of the treason 
should be reached; it was his business to warn the citizens 
against Bouille, to avoid the outposts of that commander, 
to cut by a corner way across the elbow ahead of the royal 



Sketch Map 

TO ILLUSTRATE 




^2^ 



Drouctk track through the. Forest 

aJong the ridga • ^> _.__•_». ^. 

Protiable track of De Choiseuls Hussars ^ — _ _ — 

Scale of English Mile* t 



•t* Approximate point at which 
X. Drouet left the High Road 
^ forest 

I 1 ft 



carriages, to intercept them and to thwart all. He took at 
once, therefore, to the wood upon his left; he took it where 
now the railway most nearly approaches the road, about 
half a mile beyond the level crossing — and plunged with 
his companion into its long, deep dries. He galloped up 



VARENNES 373 

the steep to a farm he knew upon the summit, riskmg holes 
and fallen trunks of trees. Once there he followed, along 
the crest of the ridge, a green lane of immemorial age that 
runs along the summit. It was well past ten. Up on the 
ridge of the forest these two men galloped steadily and hard 
through the night, with high trees like a wall on either 
side. Three hundred feet below, upon the open plain that 
skirts the wood, the berline swayed at speed along the 
paved highroad. So the race ran. The fugitives slept 
unwarned and deeply as they drew on to Varennes through 
the silent darkness. On the hills above, with every beat 
of the hoof upon the turf, the two riders neared and they 
neared. Upon who should win that race depended the 
issue of civil war. 

On the issue of that race all the future depended: all 
France and all Europe. The riders had eleven miles of 
rough woodland in the dark to cover, an hour at most for 
their ride. Below them on the highroad, with a start of 
two miles and more, their quarry was hurrying, rolling 
to Varennes. If the wheels and the smooth road beat 
them, it was Austria over the frontier, France without gov- 
ernment, defeat, and the end of their new world; but if 
they in the woodlands beat the wheels on the smooth road, 
then the Revolution was saved. 

Through a clearing in the midst of the tangled under- 
growth the two riders saw before them, as they still rode 
furiously, the glimmer of a known white stone, a land- 
mark; they sheered down a ride to the right: the wood 
ended abruptly, and they saw below them the lights of 
Varennes — one or two at that late hour, and the twinkle 
of the town lamps in the square of the town. The grasses 
of the forest were dull no longer under the anger of their 



374 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

ride: they clattered on a highroad for a moment, next in 
the narrow street of Blainville Hill. They came down 
upon the bridge head and saw the dark line of the river; they 
halted the sweating beasts and strained to listen. They 
heard no sound, except the panting of their mounts; there 
was no rumbling of wheels, no distant approach of riders, 
no noise of cavalry. It struck eleven as they waited so. 
They had been beaten, and the berline had already passed 
the town and its one bridge; or the wheels had not yet 
rumbled in, and they had won. It struck eleven as they 
waited so. 

Guillaume crossed the bridge to the main square to see 
what he could find, whether indeed they had come too late, 
and whether between them and the fugitives was now cast 
abroad that compact screen of cavalry which had failed at 
Somme-Vesle and at Ste. Menehould. Drouet stayed on 
the hither side of the bridge, inquiring among the taverns cf 
the upper town if any had seen a large travelling-coach go by. 
It seems that no one had noticed such a thing. . . . 
Yet the berline was there. 

He saw it suddenly, up the steep hill; he saw the two 
great lights of it, and he heard the postilions protesting 
that the stage was finished, that they were not bound to go 
down the hill, that their mistress at Clermont needed the 
horses early next morning for the carrying of her hay. 
But even in the midst of the discussion, though he could not 
see the horses in the darkness under the houses, he could 
hear the skid upon the wheels, and he knew that the heavy 
vehicle had begun to move. He ran down at once to a 
little inn called "The Golden Arm," burst in upon a group 
of rustic politicians, and warned them in one word that 
a large carriage would next moment go braked and slid- 



i 



VARENNES 375 

ing past; that carriage would hold, he said, the King, their 
public King — in flight for the frontier. 



The military temper of this people! Here were a hand- 
ful of men in the black darkness of the now moonless 
night, with not five minutes in which to make the decision 
that should transform the whole polity in which they lived. 
Yet they saw in a flash — and Drouet saw clearest of them 
all — first, that the high town was not occupied with troops, 
and that therefore the commanding officers and those 
awaiting the King must be in the low town beyond the river; 
secondly, that but one communication connected the King 
and his rescuers, and that that communication was the narrow 
bridge across the Aire, the river of Varennes; thirdly, that 
they could gather in those few minutes no forces, even of the 
smallest, wherewith to hold the bridge, and that the least 
noise, until the bridge was held, would give the alarm. 

There stood at the bridge head a great van for the removal 
of furniture, packed, with its pole upon the ground, wait- 
ing for the dawn, when it should be harnessed and started 
upon its road. In a moment they had drawn it across 
their end of the narrow bridge and blocked the approach. In 
the same moment certain of their companions had warned 
the oflicials of the town, and these, especially Sauce, the 
Procurator, saw to the rousing of every house upon the 
hither side of the river. 

All this was done with such rapidity that the oflficials 
were astir, the bridge barricaded, and two men already 
armed, before the royal carriage had skidded half-way down 
the hundred yards of hill. At that point an archway running 
under an old church blocked the road ; at that archway the 



376 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

two armed men posted themselves, and just as the out- 
rider of the fugitives had come into the narrow pass, the 
challenge was given which ended the hopes of the Mon- 
archy. For the two sentries thus improvised challenged, 
the outrider dismounted, voluble, the horses of the cab- 
riolet were thrown back upon their haunches, the huge 
coach-and-six behind it slithered somehow to a stop upon the 
steep road, and the Queen suddenly realised that the crash 
and the disaster had come. She heard the threat to fire. 
She looked from her window, as the Duchess fumbled for 
the passports, and uttered one of those phrases memorable 
in history for their anti-climax: she begged the gentlemen 
who had stopped them to go through the formalities quickly, 
as she was desirous of reaching the end of her journey as 
quickly as might he. 

The two armed men had increased now to eight; to this 
little group was added a German soldier or two wander- 
ing aimlessly upon leave, uncommanded and perfectly 
drunk. The ladies in the cabriolet had got out and had 
been thrust into the inn; but even when matters had gone 
so far, that incertitude and fear of responsibility, which had 
saved the family thrice already in their flight, all but saved 
them again. The passports seemed regular, and had it 
not been for the wild energy of Drouet, his threats and his 
violence, the journey would have proceeded, the van would 
have been rolled back from the bridge, the relay of horses 
in the square of the lower town would have been har- 
nessed, Bouille's own son, who had been waiting in a hotel 
beyond the river all day and was waiting there now in the 
dark, expectant, would have accompanied them out of the 
borough. . . . With the dawn, which was now not two 
hours off, the vanguard of Bouille's cavalry would have en- 



VARENNES 377 

sured their safety forever. But Drouet stormed, shouted 
perpetually the words *'High treason!" and gained all that 
he desired, which was delay. "If there were any doubt," 
said Sauce, "to wait for morning would do no harm. The 
horses needed rest, the night was dark." He lifted the 
lantern in his hand and put it closely and curiously into 
the face of the Queen: "You must get down, Madame; 
you must get down." He would not endorse the pass- 
port until the morning. 

Even during the few words of this conversation, the 
crowd had continued to increase, and with the crowd the 
armed men. It occurred to the King to command; he did 
it paternally, with a "Now, then," and a "Come, come," 
bidding the postilions go forward. Nothing happened. 
He looked out of the window and saw that the postilions 
had dismounted, and there came again, now from a great 
number of levelled muskets, the threat to fire. There was but 
one faint and last chance against discovery: to pretend 
no more than an inconvenience, and to do as they were bid. 

The family got down wearily (for twenty-four mortal 
hours they had been cramped upon that journey), entered 
the house of Sauce the Procurator, just opposite, and waited 
for the morning. Meanwhile in the street outside the 
clamour of Ste. Menehould was repeated, the tocsin sounded 
and the drum, and the men of the town armed by tens and 
by hundreds, and at last all the population, children and 
old men and women, were crowding the street, and filling 
it with perpetual noise. 

It was not yet light when the Hussars, Choiseul and his 
Hussars, came blundering out of the wood. Mercenary 
troops have great advantages. If the troops are foreign 
the advantages are greater still ; but a disadvantage attaches 



378 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

to such troops, which is the need of interpreters. They 
could understand nothing of what was going on around 
them, they could not understand the speech that was made, 
urging them to save "their" King. 

They were ordered to charge, and did so, clearing the 
street, and they formed after the short charge in front of 
the mean house which held the royal family. There 
could be no further doubt in the townsmen's minds ; it was 
indeed the King. 

The Hussars and the King and the Queen, his gaolers, the 
Municipality, all were in a general agreement that with 
dawn the royal family should continue its journey. But 
meanwhile the incalculable element, the populace, swelled 
out of all knowledge. When the first light showed in the 
streets far more than the population of Varennes was there. 
They poured in from the countrysides ; the men going to the 
fields to catch the grass with their scythes before the dew was 
off it heard the news and came ; those coming in for market 
to the lower town heard the news and came ; the Men of the 
Forest came. And the rumour that Bouille was on the 
march with his army, at the head of the hired German 
cavalry, did but increase the crowd. 

It was full day. For a second time under the increas- 
ing menace the Hussars were ordered to charge. They 
hesitated, and against them, now in rank, were the armed 
men of the local National Guard. The sun had risen. 
Goguelat tried to force his way forward, trusting that if 
he did so his Hussars would follow. But these looked on 
in a kindly German way, bewildered, and the officer of 
the National Guard shot Goguelat, who fell from his 
horse. The crowd, already morally impassable for its 
determination and its arms, was now physically so. All 



VARENNES 379 

down the street to the bridge and all round, up the courts 
and alleys, one could see nothing but the crowd; and the 
proportion of Militia uniforms among them, the number of 
bayonets that showed above their shoulders, increased as the 
hours passed, as four o'clock struck, and five, and six. 

The King's green coat had been seen a moment at the 
window; the cheers that met it (for they w^ere cheers, not 
groans) were now swelled by the voices of some ten thou- 
sand armed men, and already the cry was raised "for 
Paris." . . . Already had the scouts of Bouille's 
Uhlans appeared far off upon the sky-line of the eastern hills. 

He could never have passed the bridge in time. Noth- 
ing but artillery could have cleared the town. The gen- 
eral and popular decision was made and grew ; no discipline, 
no individual command could meet it. The cry of "Paris" 
filled the air, now with a meaningless noise, now with a 
comic rhythm, such as impatient audiences make in theatres 
or soldiers on the march. There were negotiations, but 
with every mention of " Montmedy," the shout of "Paris" 
grew louder. 

The couple of guns, which the National Guards of the 
town were allowed by law, had at their head, as was only 
right, a gunner. It was this gunner who brought the 
good news out at last and said that the King had consented 
to return. 

By seven the whole swarm of thousands, with the ber- 
line wedged in the midst, were off back westward again 
upon the Paris road, a vast dust about them, songs, and — 
what is more curious — speed, but a speed which was soon 
crushed under the pressure of such a multitude. As they 
lost the horizons of Varennes, the last sight they saw behind 
them was the main body of Bouille's German cavalry as 



380 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

it came over and formed upon the hill beyond the river, 
baffled. By ten, in a violent heat of the sun, the throng had 
crawled to Clermont; the first, the only doubtful and the 
fatal stage of the capture and the return was accomplished. 



What had happened that the King's mind should change ? 
For all those hours in Varennes every official had desired 
the continuation of the journey; all the **responsibles" 
had withstood the growing anger of the populace, when 
suddenly, Radet, the gunner, had announced a capitulation, 
and, almost as suddenly, within the half-hour before seven, 
after all those dark and morning hours of delay, the King 
had consented to return. 

What had happened was this: Two men had come with 
authority from Paris, from the Parliament — Bayou and 
Romeuf were their names; they had reached Varennes in 
the morning, the first exultant, the second reluctant; each 
came burdened with that Authority by which the French 
live, and both had entered the house of Sauce. The Queen 
had stormed, and had dashed their written message of 
Authority to the ground, but even the reluctant Romeuf 
had picked it up and laid it again reverently before her. 
Authority by which the French live lay now in the National 
Parliament. It was this which compelled the King. To 
this he had yielded. 

The military temper of this people! 

The Parliament learnt the flight of the King at about 
eight or nine o'clock in the morning following that midnight 
adventure. Bayou was commissioned to ** pursue, capture, 
and report" in the forenoon of that day the 21st of June. 



VARENNES 381 

He started eleven hours behind the King. The King, 
driven by Fersen, had passed the barriers of Paris, as we 
have seen, just after midnight of the 20th. 

It was close on noon when Romeuf had shot like an 
arrow through the Porte St. Martin, galloping hell and 
leather along the great frontier road. Louis was at Chain- 
try then, fifty miles ahead. An hour after Bayou, Romeuf, 
who had been sent also, followed upon another trail: he 
was a royalist and hated the job, but he obeyed orders; at 
last he caught the right scent from witnesses and rumour, 
and was thundering off with a heavy heart, but a soldier, 
down the same way. 

Bayou rode and he rode, a ride to test his breeches. 
Seventy miles, eighty miles, is a ride for any man. Bayou, 
relaying at every post and covering, in between, his fif- 
teen miles an hour or more, galloped into Chaintry just 
before six in the evening, and there at Chaintry — where 
at midday Louis and Marie Antoinette had graciously 
revealed themselves to old Lagny — Bayou found a sus- 
picious man, one De Briges, very evidently employed to 
follow and to aid the fugitives. Bayou dismounted, held 
that man prisoner, and dined, but not before he had sent 
on, by his written Authority, Lagny's boy helter-skelter 
up the road to rouse Chalons beyond. 

Romeuf was less speedy, but a fine rider for all that. He was 
an hour behind Bayou, he reached Chaintry on account of 
missing the scent at starting two hours behind him, 
when Bayou, having dined and sent forward that mes- 
senger, was already off in a carriage to Chalons fol- 
lowing ' the trail. They met at Chalons — a town all 
informed and astir — thence forward, the two together. 
Bayou eager, Romeuf in despair for his friends (but 



382 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

discipline constrained him), drove — not rode, past the 
bonfire glare and howling of Ste. Menehould, all night 
through Argonne, till by morning they came — with their 
Authority — to Varennes. 

And in this day and night of hard-riding Frenchmen, 
a third must be mentioned: Mangin, druggist and lawyer 
of Varennes, had galloped from Varennes at dawn, had left 
his horse collapsed at Clermont, had relayed and relayed, still 
riding, urging back to Paris to give news to the Parliament. 

He passed in a flash the carriage of Bayou, careless of 
it; long before six he was at Ste. Menehould, changed horse, 
was off to Orbeval, changed horse, was off to Somme-Vesle, 
changed horse, was off to Chalons, riding and riding hard, 
nearly fifty miles and not yet eight o'clock. He ate and 
drank and mounted, re-horsed, and on: what skin! All 
the long road all day, gallop and change and gallop under 
the sun: twelve hours in the saddle when he came to the 
deep Marne, sixteen when he dashed into Bondy. . . 
A companion, who had met him, rode on to share his 
triumph. . . . Mangin shook him off. . . . The 
suburbs of Paris . . . the barrier — eighteen hours 
of it before he got his foot to ground and staggered 
into the Assembly! Lord! what a ride! 

It was ten at night; the hundreds of candles guttered 
and glimmered over a handful of exhausted men upon 
the benches of the Parliament; Mangin handed his mes- 
sage to the Chair, and his ride was done. Good Lord, 
what a ride! 



Beauharnais was in the Chair: remarkable for this, that 
his widow married Napoleon. 



VARENNES 383 

Beaiiharnais read the message: "The King was taken!" 

As ParHaments go that ParHament was drastic and imme- 
diate ; it came to its conclusion in two hours — a space 
of time that meant thirty miles to a courier. It nomi- 
nated, somewhat after midnight, three commissioners: Bar- 
nave, Petion, Maubourg — of the centre, of the left and of 
the right — and with them Damas for military orders. 
Each young, each growing in fame — Barnave and Petion 
already famous — they left together with the morning. 

It was Thursday, Corpus Christi. Every village of the 
Marne Valley was garlanded and upon holiday, the church 
doors stood open to the humming air of midsummer, the 
peasants, most of them at games, some few in procession or 
coming out from Mass, upon that great feast made every stage 
of the road alive; as the sun rose to noon, the population of the 
villages on either slope of the river valley poured in like rivulets 
down the chalky lanes, swelling the mob upon the great 
highway. By the afternoon the throng had so largely 
increased that the carriage of the Parliamentary Com- 
missioners could no longer go at the trot, it was walked, 
as was walked, surrounded by a larger, dustier, much fiercer 
crowd, that other carriage, the berline, which was crawling 
to meet them across the flat miles of Champagne. 

The hills grew higher, the dale narrower, as their slow 
progress brought them past Dormans, and gradually, 
with the multitude about them, to Mareuil. The setting 
sun was on the famous vineyards and on the fringe of forest 
far above: they were anxious, perhaps, whether they would 
meet the returning fugitives while yet it was light, and so 
be spared the risk of confusion and perhaps disaster in the 
darkness. 

But that meeting could not now be far off. Rumour 



384 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

first, then couriers, going before the gradual advance of 
the King's captors announced his advent, and the three 
Commissioners wondered what they would see. Reports 
had already moved them, true details in the midst of much 
fable, of invasion and of fancied massacres and fires . . . 
the mob at Chalons, the sleepless night of consultation, 
the irruption of a violent militia from Rheims, the ter- 
rible slow march on the Epernay road with its jeers and 
anger and threats of death; the violent jostle at Epernay 
itself — the fear that the prisoners might never reach the 
capital. They had heard composedly of these things, 
with clearer and clearer detail as the later passages of the long 
agony were given: they were now very near the meeting. 

The hot day had fallen to its end, and evening was come 
quite pure over the high plateaus that bound the valley; 
it was darker upon the water-meadows of the valley floor 
when they saw before them, a long way off, the dust, and 
heard the noise, when they came near and smelt the incal- 
culable crowd that roared round the carriages of the King. 

The advent of the Commissioners of Parliament threw 
an abrupt silence over the French, ever avid for worship: 
these three dissimilar men, one of whom alone approached 
greatness, were taken as transubstantiate with the National 
power. In such an attitude, near the doors of the berline, 
in the centre of the compact thousands that were massed, 
hats off and reverent in gaze, between the hillside and the 
river, Petion read the Decree of the Assembly. 

With excuses upon their part and voluble instance from 
the King, Petion and Barnave managed to get them- 
selves into the carriage, for the Queen took the Dauphin 
on her knee, the Princess stood before her aunt, and Petion 
decorously straightened between the Duchesse de Tourzel 




PETION 



VARENNES 385 

and Madame Elizabeth, faced Barnave, who sat, more 
generously large between the King and Queen. 

At last the Commissioners could w^atch that driven group. 
Three nights without sleep, two of agony; three days, one 
of flight, two of intolerable heat, insult, violence, and a 
snail's-pace progress, had left them feverish, and yet — as 
sufferers are when all is quite abnormal — interested in tiny 
things, and careless. Their linen was dirty in the extreme — 
the Queen's grey dress stained, torn, and roughly mended, 
the King's brown coat a very dusty brow^n; but their faces 
were clean — they had washed at Epernay — and they 
were not unlively. 

It got darker and darker; the noise of the crowd out- 
side calmed a little, though from time to time a great rustic 
head would lumber in at the window to stare at royalty. 
The Queen, who had talked rapidly from the moment she 
had seen her deliverers, Madame Elizabeth, who had 
caught and pressed Petion's arm and clung in a foolish 
ecstasy of terror, kept up a ceaseless chatter — and the 
King, against his wont, joined in. They had not meant 
to leave the country — far from it. " No ' ' (from the King) ; 
*'I said so positively. Did I not.?" (appealing to his wife). 
*'We are really anxious about the three Guardsmen. 
We went to Mass at Chalons this morning — but it was 
constitutional, I assure you." Only once did the reserve 
of an earlier (and a later) time appear upon the Queen; 
it was when Barnave hinted that one of the men on the box 
was Swedish, when Petion added that the man who had 
driven the coach from the Tuileries was a Swede — called ? 
... he pretended to hesitate about the name : the Queen had 
said, "I am not in the habit of learning hackney coachmen's 
names," and, after saying it, was, for perhaps the first time 



386 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

in two hours, silent. Then she forgave them — forgave 
Barnave at least — and talked on in lower tones. She was 
getting to like Barnave. The little boy, playing with the 
buttons on Barnave's coat, made out the letters on them. 
"It says *we will live free or die.'" He was proud to read 
such small letters so well. He repeated the phrase, but no 
one of his elders answered him. 

Petion, upon the back seat, felt an arm upon his in the 
darkness. He remembered the same arm as it held him 
close when he had met the berline two hours before. He 
saw under the moonlight the white and small hand of 
Madame Elizabeth lying near his, and it occurred to him' 
that this very pious, very narrow, very distant girl either 
suddenly loved him or feigned love in order to corrupt his 
republican ardour — for he was already republican. 

It is objected with indignation that women of birth do 
not so demean themselves with country lawyers. The indig- 
nation is fatuous, but the objection is well founded. Women 
of birth have indeed so profound a repugnance for his class 
that even the bait of a great fortune, though it often com- 
pels them to a marriage, will hardly overcome the loathing, 
and if they must yield to passion it is more commonly to 
favour a groom than a solicitor. But this woman had no such 
frailties. She was saintly, foolish, well bred and bewildered. 
She may have made herself as pleasant a companion as it 
was in her power to be, for by such easy arts the rich, when 
they fall, will always try to appease their conquerors. More 
than that she certainly did not do. The Queen knew better 
in what way to command her captors ; she fixed upon Bar- 
nave, and within the first day of their companionship she 
had drawn him from that other camp into hers. 

1 He has recorded this sensE^tion at length in print. 



VARENNES 387 

They slept at Dormans — so much as they could sleep 
with the mob howling all night in the square outside. Next 
day, Friday, the third of that return, the fourth of that 
martyrdom, they continued the Paris road. The day was 
yet hotter than the yesterday had been, and the violent and 
the out-o'-works from Paris began to join the crowd. At 
evening the tower of Meaux stood up before them against 
the red sky. 

There, at Meaux, Marie Antoinette took a turn with 
Bamave; long, quiet looks, a familiar and continued con- 
versation, a stroll in the garden alone and decent confi- 
dences during the night, finally captured Barnave. He was, 
from the moment of their return to Paris, the Queen's. 

He suffered no conversion in opinion, he did not forget 
his early political principle, he simply became indifferent to 
it and a servant of something that lived and suffered and 
exercised also upon some few — and he was one — a charm, 
perhaps of voice, perhaps of carriage, but, at any rate, 
of sex. 

He worked henceforward absolutely for Marie Antoinette. 
He achieved so little that his name will hardly appear again 
in this record of her fall, but his name should be retained as 
a proof of what she still was to men. 

He has long been accused of treason. He would have 
told you that he betrayed a formula, a phrase, to be the 
more loyal to a soul and body which he had come, as by a 
revelatioUj to understand. But Barnave was wrong: not to 
bodies or things, but to ideas, are men rightly subject: 
religion resides in dogma: loyalty must express itself in a 
creed, and the Word is God. These reasonings against 
reason, these preferences of the thing to the idea, are dan- 
gerous to honour. 



388 MARIE ANTOINETTE ^ 

Henceforward Bamave was near her always : advised her 
secretly, wrote to dictation from her lips: ran risk and peril, 
and at last died by the same hands which had killed her also 
upon the scaffold. 

This bishop's Palace at Meaux, the halls that Bossuet had 
known, was their last resting-place. The sun was well up, 
it was already warm when they left the town for the slow 
stretch of thirteen hours to Paris. 

The weather would not change. The same intense and 
blinding heat pursued and tortured them; but it was now 
less tolerable than ever, both from the length to which the 
strain had been spun out, and from the increasing crowds 
which lined the old paved road in a wider and wider margin 
as they neared the capital. The flat hedgeless fields seemed 
covered with men — as the prisoners saw it through their 
low windows — to the horizon. The murmur beyond had 
swelled into a sort of permanent roar, which mixed with the 
songs and cries of the few hundred that still kept pace with 
the carriages, and now that they had left the valley of the 
Marne and entered the dry plain that bounds Paris to the 
north, the drought and the dust were past bearing. The 
approach of evening afforded them no relief. At the gate 
of the city, where at least they might expect the contrast of 
the familiar streets and the approach to repose, they were 
disappointed. The driver had orders to skirt the barrier 
round to the western side. So for some two hours more this 
calvary dragged on: the ragged marchers themselves were 
exhausted, many clung to the sides of the coach. Some 
few had climbed upon its roof and jeered and threat- 
ened those three Guards, who sat silent in their yellow 
liveries not replying, awaiting their chance of escape at the 
end of this endless journey. 



d 




BARNAVE 



VARENNES 389 

AMien the last slope into the town was climbed, the 
travellers, as they crossed the flat summit where is now the 
Triumphal Arch of Napoleon, could see at last before them, 
beyond lines of trees and about the innumerable heads, the 
windows of their palace sending back the evening light in a 
blaze, and to the left that huge oblong roof of the riding- 
school where sat the Parliament. 

Meanwhile, as the berline passed the barrier the bellowing 
and the songs, the tramping and the press of moving poverty, 
white with dust and parched to drunkenness, ceased sud- 
denly. It was like a stream of anarchy breaking against 
that curious homogeneity of attitude and clear purpose 
which marked the capital upon every principal day of the 
Revolution and cut it off sharply from the provinces and 
even the suburbs around. 

This new and purely Parisian crowd which they now 
entered, silent, dark-coated and with covered heads — 
largely of the middle class — thronged all the length of 
the Champs Elysees and packed the Place de la Concorde. 
The myriad fixed eyes of it saw the convoy show black 
against the western light upon the summit of the hill; 
they watched it creeping down the avenue between the 
double line of soldiery, each section of which, as the King 
passed, reversed arms as at a funeral soldiers reverse arms. 

There was no sound. The spontaneous discipline which 
makes Paris a sort of single thing, living and full of will, so 
controlled this vast assemblage that neither a cry was raised 
nor a hat lifted. The note of the whole was silence. 

During the full half-hour of that long approach down the 
hill this silence endured; the carriage was at the gates of 
the Tuileries Gardens, had entered them. Within the rid- 
ing-school, the manege where sat the Parliament, to 



390 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

benches that rapidly emptied as the curiosity of the 
Deputies drew them away, Fursy was droning out a 
report upon fortified places of the first, the second, and the 
third class. Outside, the crowd still denser but silent as 
ever, the berline passed and the sections saluted — a 
reversed salute, on either side ; it was within a furlong of its 
goal when, from a platform outside the Parliament building, 
a young member of the Royalist right drawing himself well 
up that he might be observed, lifted his hat and very gravely 
and pronouncedly made obeisance to the Crown. 

The spell was broken. There was a scuffle, a hubbub, 
a general war; the slowly moving crowd crested into weapons 
as a deep swell at sea will crest into foam. The postilions 
of the berline urged their horses; a hundred yards to go, 
and the hedge of soldiery was forced and the mob was 
upon the carriage. The three Guardsmen sat still un- 
touched, with death upon them ; but the horses floundered 
through the deafening cries and strugglers, trampling and 
rearing; the great vehicle was hauled and piloted in; the 
wrought-iron gates clanged behind it. It was past seven 
and the journey was ended. 

A week had gone. On Monday night they had watched 
with Fersen; all Tuesday fled; on Wednesday night and 
morning suffered at Varennes, and in the slow drag-back to 
Chalons; on Thursday at Epernay met the Commissioners, 
all Friday suffered their captivity till Meaux was reached — 
and now, as the light of Saturday began to fall, the hunting 
was over. 



XV 

THE WAR 

FROM SATURDAY, JUNE 25, 1791, TO HALF-PAST EIGHT ON THE 
EVENING OF JUNE 20, 1792 

A MAN, callous or wearied by study, might still dis- 
cover in the pursuit of History one last delight: 
the presence in all its record of a superhuman irony. 
In Padua, where the Polignacs had taken refuge with 
their loot, the Emperor Leopold, returning from Tuscany, 
was at that moment their host and guest. With them and 
their circle he discussed the enormities of the French and the 
approaching escape of his sister and the King; for he was 
cognisant of that plan; he knew that since the death of 
Mirabeau the idea of relying upon French arms against the 
Parliament had been abandoned, and that an invasion by 
foreign allies was the scheme of the Court. 

Leopold certainly designed, when the first part of that 
scheme was accomplished and the King was in safety on 
the frontier, to strengthen the royal armies with his own 
and to advance upon the Revolution. Varennes, I repeat, 
was everything. The King once free of Paris, and the 
armies would have been over the frontier. The King a 
captive in Paris, and compelled to pose as the acting and 
national Executive, war was another matter. The French 
nation could act as one force. 

So insecure and dilatory were the communications of the 
time that for a whole fortnight nothing but guesses reached 

391 



392 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

Padua. Upon the second of July these guesses urged Leo- 
pold to write; but at last, upon the 5th, a fortnight after 
the flight, came definite and official news. The King had 
succeeded. He was safe in Metz with the army of Bouille. 
The Queen was safe beyond the frontier in Luxembourg. 

Leopold sat down and wrote at once a sort of pasan, a 
cry of triumph and of immediate action, and offered his 
treasury, his army, his everything to his sister for the imme- 
diate march against the French people. 

She, in Paris, watched and guarded every way, had found 
it possible to write to Fersen two notes which, when he 
destroyed these many monuments of her love for him, he 
copied with his own hand. Her main preoccupation is that 
he should not return by stealth. She tells him he is dis- 
covered, and that his part in the flight is known; she begs 
him to keep safe. But it is probable or certain from one 
phrase in these notes that in the bitter anger of the moment 
she desired to be rescued by a chivalry under arms, and 
would appeal to war. 

That determination in turn she abandoned, and from the 
month of August onwards until nine months later, the armed 
struggle began, one plan, lucid, and especially lucid when one 
considers that it proceeded from so imperfect a judgment as 
hers, possessed her and was continually expressed: she 
demanded a congress backed by arms, the immediate threat 
of a vast but silent force, and no word of hostilities. Never- 
theless and largely, as we shall see, through her, war came. 
It came with the spring and these few months after Varennes 
are but the lull before the noise of the first guns. 

I would here admit into the text of this book one of those 
discussions which, in History of a living sort, should but 
rarely be admitted, and belong rather to an appendix. 



THE WAR 393 

I admit it because a conclusion upon it is vital to any com- 
prehension of the Queen and of the European position which 
ended in the struggle between France and Europe. 

No historical quarrel has been more warmly debated than 
this. Did the old society, notably the Germanics, and at 
last all the privileged of Europe, down to the very merchants 
of the city of London, attack the Revolution to destroy it .'' 
Or did the Revolution break out in a flame against them, 
and compel them to the action they took and to the genera- 
tion of war which ended in Waterloo ? 

In the current negation of morals the question has been 
thought by many to lack reality. Yet such is the nature 
of man that if he cannot give a human answer upon the 
matter of right and wrong, and a decision upon his motive, 
all his action turns to dust, and he can neither approve 
nor disapprove any human act. Now when man can 
neither approve nor disapprove, things cease to be, so far as 
his intelligence is concerned; and without morals even his 
senses are dead. Therefore is it, and has it always been, of 
supreme importance to every great conflict of History that the 
one side or other should justify itself in motive. And there- 
fore has this discussion raged around the origins of the 
Great War. 

There is one sense in which the debate can never be 
resolved. It can be argued for ever as a metaphysical 
proposition; just as a man may argue whether a spherical 
surface is concave or convex, and fall at last into mere 
legomachy, so it may be eternally debated as to which of the 
two combatants was legitimately defending his existence. 
It is evident that both were in this position. 

Again, there is a fruitless and eternal debate opened if we 
are to consider separately every chief personality concerned. 



394 ' MARIE ANTOINETTE 

Did Brissot really want war ? Did Danton want it ? Did 
the Emperor want it ? Did Berlin want it ? Did Spain ? 
Did the King, Louis? Did Dumouriez? The varying 
ignorance of each character named, the varying intensity 
of the emotions and necessities of each, the divergence of 
particular objects in each individual case make such a 
synthesis impossible. But if one looks at the field in general 
and considers the common action of men between the 
return from Varennes and that April day when Louis was 
compelled to read out the Declaration of War before the 
French Parliament, a true picture, I think, arises in the mind, 
which — when, if ever, the Revolution ceases to incline to 
judgment — will be the final judgment of History. It is as 
follows : — 

All desired war: all feared it. All attempted to postpone 
it. But, as all energy of its nature polarises, these energetic 
hatreds and fears gathered round two centres. The one 
in France had for its heart the young men from the south 
and all their group, soon to be called the *' Girondins," who, 
when the new Parliament gathered at the close of the 
summer of Varennes, rapidly came to lead it. These men, 
Gallic in temper, more and more desired to bring to the 
issue of arms sooner rather than later what they thought 
must end — could not but end — in war. Round this clear 
opinion, by the time winter had come, what was living and 
active in France increasingly gathered. It is a phenomenon 
repeated a hundred times in the history of the French peo- 
ple. We shall certainly see an example of it in our own 
generation. The hand once upon the hilt of the sword 
draws it. 

Over against this current of opinion the Emperor (Marie 
Antoinette's brother), the King of Prussia, the English 



THE WAR 395 

Oligarchy. The Spanish Bourbons also tended to war; 
their decision was not due to an increase of determination 
— they were determined on the main question all along — • 
but to the gradual settlement of details long in negotiation 
between them. These details settled, and the mutual suspi- 
cions and jealousies of the Allies sufficiently though partially 
appeased, the privileged bodies of Europe certainly marched 
against France, and to the Girondin crusade was opposed 
something which was intended not to be resistance but rather 
a rapid and successful act of police. The thing had got to 
end, and, though the Powers only crossed the frontier in the 
succeeding summer, all the Courts of Europe and all the 
privileged bodies of the old Society were contented and glad 
that the fight was on. Nor were any more contented than the 
governing class in England, who had helped to engineer 
the campaign and who could not but reap the fruit 
of it, though it was profoundly to their interest not to 
bring into the field the insufficient armed forces at their 
command. 

In the appreciation of this situation an element must be 
remembered without which the modern student goes all 
astray. The Allies were bound to win. We to-day, looking 
back upon those amazing twenty years, forget that truth. 
Valmy, though still almost inexplicable, has happened, 
and we take it for granted. The long straggling regiments 
of Napoleon, the butchers' boys turned generals, the vul- 
garian dukes and marshals, the volunteer gunners and the 
rest of it, won ; and their victory is now part of the European 
mind. In that winter before the war broke out, as '91 
turned into '92, it was not so. 

The elements obvious to every thinking man, especially 
to the cold and therefore profoundly insufficient judgment 



S96 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

of alien observers in Paris itself (of such coxcombs as 
Gouverneur Morris, for instance), were elements which 
made the final and rapid defeat of the Revolution certain, 
and gave that approaching defeat all the qualities of 
what I have called it, an act of police. The Allies 
might be jealous and suspicious one of the other, 
but there can be no doubt once an accord was come 
to — and it was reached in the early months of '92 — 
that against the anarchy into which the French 
people had fallen, and the hopeless indiscipline of their 
swollen armies, the operations of the invaders would soon 
become but a series of executions, and a summary and 
severe suppression of armed mobs. The enthusiasm of the 
Girondins, and soon of all France, was the enthusiasm of 
rhetoricians and that self-doubting expectation of the impos- 
sible which is proper to inebriate moods. Nor was there one 
commander of experience west of the Rhine who anticipated 
victory for the French, nor one commander east of the Rhine 
who dreaded the failure of the Kings. It was mere sound — 
as poetry and music are mere sound — that urged the French 
to war. And those who in theory combated the policy of 
war, of whom Robespierre was the most remarkable, those 
who, from their concrete experience, desired to fend it off 
(with the army in such a state! with the military temper 
of the people so hopelessly wild!) that is, you may say, 
every general oflScer — foresaw at the best some sort of 
compromise whereby the Revolution would end, after some 
few battles lost, in some sort of a Limited Monarchy. 
It was the appetite for a Limited Monarchy which made 
so many acquiesce in such a campaign in spite of the cer- 
tainty of defeat. It was the fear that the great ideal of the 
Revolution might tail off into a Limited Monarchy that 



THE WAR 397 

made the most ardent democrats oppose the policy of what 
could not but be a disastrous war. 

Meanwhile, during the earlier months of this develop- 
ment, the French nobles who had crossed the frontier 
(the Emigres), and notably the brothers of the King, were 
an element of peril to either side, lest, a small and irresponsible 
body, they should provoke hostilities before either side 
demanded them. The Emigres were active because they 
had nothing to lose, and careless of this moment because 
for them negotiation was unnecessary. To restrain this 
activity was the chief anxiety of the great interests which 
were slowly coalescing into that invincible instrument of 
war whose mission it was to restore order under the King 
of Prussia and the Duke of Brunswick. As the months 
proceed, as the coalition forms, this disturbing element is of 
less and less importance. In the early summer of '92, when 
war is once declared, the Emigres fall into line with the 
rest of the Allies ; and when the invading army crosses the 
frontier, the Emigres cross with it in the natural course of 
things and merge in the general flood. 



Such was the general development of the European situa- 
tion between the month of July, 1791, and the month of 
April, 1792. 

^Vhat, during that period, was the particular disposition of 
the Queen ? 

She was very active. She had determined upon a lucid 
plan, and of all the brains that were thinking out how and 
when, if ever, the struggle should come, hers was perhaps 
the most tenacious of its purpose. 

We have a dozen letters of hers between the return from 



Sd8 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

Varennes and the end of the year. One of great length, 
written to her brother in September, is accompanied by a 
memorandum and exactly details her plan. With the 
exception of two which were written, as a blind, for publica- 
tion, and which in a private note she ridicules and disowns, 
every word she writes is consistent with her thesis. She pro- 
poses that the International Congress should be called. In 
her later letters she begs that it maybe called near the frontier, 
as for instance, at Cologne. Before it is summoned, and 
during its session, there must be gathered an overwhelming 
military force ready to invade at once. But not a syllable 
must be breathed that could be taken as menace. In this 
plan Marie Antoinette was considering the personal safety 
of her husband and her child ; and the whole theory of the 
action she advised pivoted upon a certain conception of 
the French people which was now so fixed in her mind that 
nothing could dissolve it ; her theory was that the French were 
not a military people; that they spent energy in words, and 
that before a plain evidence of force they would always give 
way; she carried that theory of hers, little as it later accorded 
with the brute facts of actual war, unmodified to the scaffold. 
I have repeatedly insisted in this book upon the inability 
of Marie Antoinette to perceive the French mind. As a 
young woman her misconception of her husband's people 
dealt with no more than personalities, ladies' maids, duch- 
esses, and the rest. When Gaul moved, and when she 
began her attempt at power in 1787, along through the 
communal millioned action of the Revolution, this miscon- 
ception became a strong creed, a vision as it were. She 
saw the French people intensely active, cruel, cowardly, 
and unstable : much in them of the cat and the fox, nothing 
of the eagle. She perceived their great mobs and their 



I 



THE WAR 399 

sudden united actions — but these phenomena were to her 
sporadic; she saw them — she did not reason upon them, nor 
argue from them some peculiar regimental talent in the 
populace; and if you had told her that these appearances of 
marching thousands were due to a power of organisation 
from below — a national aptitude for the machinery neces- 
sary to arms and to diplomacy — the words would have 
seemed to her simply meaningless. She could not so much 
as conceive humanity to be capable of organisation save by 
the direct action of a few placed above it. 

Of military qualities she understood nothing. She con- 
fused order, silence, and similarity of buttons with discipline. 
She had no conception of ferocity as the raw material of 
valour. Safe out of Paris she would without a moment's 
hesitation have ordered the invasion, and she would have 
expected its successful issue in less than six weeks. Even in 
Paris she would have bargained to conquer with a "whiff 
of grape-shot" or some such rubbish; but in Paris, without 
one regiment to hand and without regular artillery, she 
felt that the very bodies of her family were in peril from 
*' monsters and from tigers" — the words are her own : hence 
only did she hesitate and demand an armed congress rather 
than an invasion. To that armed congress and its menace 
she had no doubt at all that the French would yield. 

A metaphor will explain the situation clearly. A human 
being, caught by some fierce animal but not yet mauled, 
appeals in a whisper to a comrade near by to load, and, if 
possible, by some demonstration of human force or of will 
to make the wild best loose its hold; he begs that comrade 
to do nothing merely provocative lest the animal should rend 
him upon whom it has pounced : but, of course, that comrade 
is to fire at the first active gesture of attack the brute may 



400 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

deliver. Of the ultimate victory of his armed comrade 
the man in peril feels there can be no doubt at all; he only 
advises a particular caution on account of his own situation 
and impotence. 

Moreover, she was convinced, and says it in so many 
words, that the French would give way at once before the 
presence of a great and silent but determined force upon 
their frontier. 

So clear is the plan in her mind that she is bitterly 
impatient of the necessary caution and delay of diplomacy, 
and of the long process of negotiation whereby Berlin is 
brought into the agreement, the tergiversations of Madrid 
are discounted and the exact balance between desire for 
war and power to wage it are sounded. Here and there 
the peevishness of her early womanhood appears in the 
complaints she makes, almost as though she had been aban- 
doned bv her brother and his armies. 

At last, in February, 1792, this long correspondence is 
ended. The French nation has, upon the whole, accepted, its 
young rhetoricians enthusiastically acclaimed the approach 
of war. She, true to her plan, proposes that her brother shall 
meet this growing enthusiasm by positive demands, defini- 
tively formulated, dealing with the internal affairs of the 
French people, proceeding from Vienna and demanding in- 
stant reply. We now know that she herself drafted these 
demands, and on the 16th of February Mercy writes to tell 
her that the Emperor will order the French Parliament to 
maintain French Monarchy, in its full rights and liberty, to 
withdraw the French armies from the frontier, to respect the 
imperial rights of the Alsatian feudatories ; and that he will 
at once back up this ultimatum with an additional force, 
beyond that already gathering, of 40,000 men. She acknowl- 



e, 1 



ft S '"^ 



""1^/ fi tyfeti^iti fiitf //0/i^ tt{vt'f/iy'^itv4„„. 
iTut tuijifiiitc- ^.„'i,i ^tii:>_ Villi (in tiJi//i»ii(^ 

nil y'leii, /Ttt nui 'ttf-'y^ta.i^*"^ e7t)tt>,„y^y 

FACSIMILE OF FIRST PAGE OF MARIE ANTOINETTE'S LETTER 

Written on September 3, 1791, to the Emperor, her brother, proposing 



armed intervention 



THE WAR 401 

edges the plan and confirms it. A fortnight later, upon the 
1st of March, Mercy can give her the last great news: 
Prussia has formally consented to move, though demanding, 
of course, from the Frendi Monarchy after its victory, 
compensation for the cost of the campaign — which will 
surely be willingly accorded. 

It was on the 1st of March, I say, that this final news was 
wTitten, w^hen, as so continually chances throughout 
Marie Antoinette's life, a special fate appears and intervenes. 

On the 1st of March the King of Prussia has agreed 
to march with Leopold, and all is ready for that armed 
demonstration which would, as she was convinced, calm this 
great storm about her. On that same day, the 1st of 
March, Leopold lay dead. Doctors assure us that he was 
not poisoned. 

Two things followed upon that death : first, the heir, her 
nephew, a sickly boy of twenty-four, now held in Vienna 
all the power that in those days accompanied the Crown, 
and he in his weakness was now the master of the armies 
his father had summoned. 

Secondly, there must be a long delay for the business and 
the trapping of his election and his crowning. 

Her plan meanwhile had failed. It was to be not a 
silent threat of arms, but war. The French temper 
had taken Leopold's command as a challenge. The ulti- 
matum she had suggested or drafted was met by a total 
change in the Executive of France. Dumouriez was 
made the chief man in the new Ministry and w^as 
personally in charge of Foreign Affairs. The guns were 
certainly ready. For ten days after Dumouriez' nomination 
she drew from him his designs; and on the tenth day wrote 
secretly to Mercy in cipher betraying his plan of campaign 



402 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

upon the Meuse. Three days later the last of her friends 
who could command an army, the King of Sweden, stabbed 
a fortnight earlier, died; and on the 20th of April her hus- 
band, "the Head of the French Executive," read out in a 
firm voice a declaration of war against her nephew, "the 
King of Hungary" — for he was not yet crowned Emperor. 
Having so read it in a firm voice he went back home, and 
Marie Antoinette and he must now bethink themselves 
how the madness of the people, when the invasion should 
begin, might be fended off — at least from their own persons 
and from their heir, until their saviours should show the white 
Austrian uniforms in Paris and march the grotesque Prussian 
march within sight and hearing of the Tuileries. On the 
30th of the month she advised Mercy that the first proclama- 
tion of the invaders had best be mild. 



Such had been the plan of the Queen, and such its for- 
tune; and by such a fate had she been shadowed. For the 
sake of clarity I have omitted during this recital all save 
her negotiation. I will briefly return to the drift of the 
Revolutionary progress around her, and show how this also 
led up to that fatal conclusion, from the failure of the flight 
to Varennes at the end of June, 1791, to the declaration 
of war in the following April. 



When spirits are at high tension and in full vision, as it 
were, often a shock brings back the old, sober, and incomplete 
experience of living. Such a shock the flight to Varennes 
had afforded. While the royal family were yet absent 
there had been talk against the very institution of the 



THE WAR 403 

Crown; and some rich men had spoken of the Republic; 
the Revohitionary exaltation ran very high. The flight 
was arrested: the royal family were brought back, and in 
a sort of mechanical, unconscious way reaction gathered 
force; after all (the politicians thought) the nation must 
not lose, could not afford to lose, might lose its very soul 
in losing, the web of inheritance which had come to it 
from so many centuries. 

This force of reaction exploded when, during the Feasts 
of the Federation, three weeks after the return of the royal 
family, a popular outbreak upon the Champ de Mars 
was repressed by the declaration of martial law, the use of 
the Militia under La Fayette, and the authority of the 
Mayor of Paris. 

The Revolution,"going the way we know it did, the hatreds, 
the threats of vengeance covertly growing from that day 
(which the poor and their champions had already christened 
among themselves the "Massacre of Champ de Mars") 
take on a great importance; but to the people of the time 
the tumult and its armed repression did not seem of any 
great consequence save as the beginning of quieter things. 
The end of the summer was principally occupied in some 
speculation as to what the new Parliament would do when it 
should be convened in the autumn. That Parliament was 
restricted in power : the National Assembly which had made 
the Revolution was to be dissolved. This second body was 
to do no more than elaborate the details of laws; it was 
called, and remains to history, "The Legislative." 

By an ironical accident, this very Parliament of one year, 
from which the great and by this time well-known leaders 
of the early Revolutionary movement were specifically 
excluded (for no man might sit in it who had sat in the 



404 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

National Assembly) had thrust upon it the duty or the burden 
of the Great War. Such was the Revolutionary time and air, 
that from anywhere genius sprang; and through these men 
of the Legislative — so many of them young, nearly all of 
them unknown — chosen only to sit in an ephemeral 
assembly for a year — there blew such inspiration as Plato 
thought to blow through poets, but which, in times of social 
creation blows through rhetoricians too. Chief among these 
was the group of men from the South who were later called 
the Gironde. It was their business to demand and to with- 
stand the first assault of Europe, and indeed before the 
Parliament met at all, it was certain that the assault would 
come, for in the August of 1791, in the midst of the reaction 
which overshadowed Paris, and while the principal leaders 
of the E-evolution were exiled or in hiding, there was drawn 
up that compact between the German monarchs which is 
called the Declaration of Pillnitz. 

This document has too often been put forward as an 
example of the hesitation and moderation of the Kings. 
Such a view of it is an academic reaction from the 
old, popular, and vague but in the main just conception that 
privilege made deliberate war upon the Revolution: a 
conception which often took Pillnitz for the inception of 
that counter- crusade. 

The matter can be presented quite simply to the reader: 
The Emperor, Marie Antoinette's brother, whom we have 
seen so eager, had the flight to Varennes succeeded, to move 
his armies at once, combined at Pillnitz with the King of 
Prussia in an appeal to all monarchical governments that 
they should use such strength as might give back to the King 
of France his old arbitrary power, and re-establish him 
therein. The two allies swear publicly that they will use 



I 



THE WAR 405 

all necessary force, when such an appeal bears fruit, to 
support this universal assault upon the French people, and 
meanwhile they will direct their troops to the best striking 
points from which the military action of that people may 
he paralysed. 

There is the Declaration of Pillnitz in a few words; and 
while one partisan may insist upon its caution or nullity, 
another upon its insolence and provocation, all must agree 
who read history quietly and without a brief, that it was a 
violent and public declaration of hostile intention as it was 
also the first definite public act from which hostilities sprang. 

The Parliament met in September. Its proposed second- 
ary value soon proved to be primary; the splendid definition, 
rapidity and precision of the National Assembly was well 
reflected among these younger and less tried men : but much 
more powerful than Parliament was the growing exaltation 
of the populace. ^ 

That had many roots: the oblivion of the French (after 
forty years) of what war might mean, the impatient passion 
for any solution which all feel during a moment of strain, 
most of all the moral certitude (and how well founded !) that 
if the enemy delayed they delayed only for their own purpose, 
and that war must certainly come — all these pressed to the 
final issue: the noise of the cataract could already be heard. 

As to the acceptation of the Constitution by the royal 
family, their reluctance, the Queen's anger, it but little 
concerns the story of her fate. At bottom she and Louis 
also were willing enough by this time to sign anything and 
to swear anything. The war must come, and the war would 
solve all. The Queen herself, who was now, as I have 
shown, in the thick of the intrigue, put it simply enough to 
the man she most loved, to Fersen, in a note that has been 



406 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

preserved and which she wrote before the end of September. 
"It would have been more noble to refuse (the Constitu- 
tion) . . . it is essential to accept (it), in order to 
destroy any suspicion that we are not acting in good faith." 

So far as concerns that unhappy and devoted life, one 
incident deserves a very special mention. Twice in the 
autumn there had been talk of yet another flight : the plan 
was not impossible, but it had been dropped, partly because 
the King might have had to fly alone, partly because the 
Queen was confident that a show of strength and a vigorous 
menace upon the frontier would be enough to change all. 
In the new year the proposal for their escape took on a more 
serious form, and Fersen reappeared for the last time, and 
for the last time saw the Queen. 

It was upon Saturday the 11th of February, 1792, that he 
started upon that perilous journey, and it was his business 
to discuss in detail and by word of mouth whether escape 
was still possible. Upon Monday, the 13th, at evening, he 
passed the barrier of Paris. He saw the Queen before he 
slept, and next day at midnight spoke secretly to her and to 
her husband together. He carefully noted before them the 
routes that might be followed: the method of escape: per- 
haps (as had appeared in several plans) the string of forests 
that run up from Paris north-eastward toward the marches 
of Flanders. 

The King and the Queen wasted no little time in that mid- 
night hurried parley in reproaches against the ingratitude 
of all, and in bewailing their isolation. The next day Fer- 
sen left with nothing done. He returned indeed to Paris 
four days later, but he dared not enter the palace. The 
whole thing was futile and every plan had broken down. 

He never saw her again. 



THE WAR 407 

A fortnight later he wrote his King, in Sweden, detaiUng 
all that they had told him. 

Before he could reply or act, the King of Sweden had been 
shot in a masked ball at Stockholm, and some days later, as 
the reader knows, he had died. 



The Declaration of War had not only broken the original 
plan of the Queen ; it had changed from a general and partly 
passive to a particular and active terror the life of Paris 
around her. Nothing had yet appeared to show as a reality 
what all knew in theory, the extreme peril of the nation, the 
military certitude inspiring the Allies, the despair increasing 
among what was left of the French Regulars. There had 
indeed been desertions immediately following the declaration 
of war, especially desertions of the German mercenaries, in 
bulk. A skirmish, or rather a panic upon the frontier, had 
also given evidence of the rot in the jumble of armed men 
whom the Revolution could summon. The first tiny action 
— it was hardly an action at all — had seen mutinies and the 
massacre of officers. Paris once more rose and fermented, 
and there was a surging around the walls of the palace. 
The enemy had not yet crossed the frontier; but in the short 
breathing-space before he should appear, and while the 
royal family were holding a fortress, as it were, for their 
own security until that enemy should arrive. Parliament 
put as a sort of ultimatum to the King a demand for the 
execution of two decrees : one against the Clergy who would 
not subscribe to the Civic Oath; a second in favour of the 
formation of a camp of 20,000 volunteers under the walls 
of Paris. 

The error of uniting in one requisition two such diverse 



408 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

pleas only posterity can recognise. For the men of the time 
there was a plain link between either demand, for the 
recalcitrant Clergy seemed to them nothing more than anti- 
nationalists, and it seemed to them that nothing but an 
anti-national desire for the occupation of Paris by the 
foreigner could make the King hesitate to permit the forma- 
tion of the camp of volunteers. 

It was upon the 19th of June that the King published his 
veto against both these bills or projects of the Parliament, 
behind which lay the violent opinion of active Paris.' 

What follows is well known. Paris rose, and rising 
poured into the palace. It was the 20th. 

The 20th of June: the anniversary of the flight: the 
summer solstice fatal to the Bourbons. 

It has been said that the rising was artificial and 
arranged. The same nonsense is talked of the St.Bartholo- 
mew. No one who has seen such things can believe them 
artificial. They are corporate things. There was little 
violence, though there were many arms among those thou- 
sands upon thousands; and as they poured through the 
rooms, which opened one into the other like a gallery, they 
were not much more (save for their rough clothes and their 
arms) than the same populace which had demanded for 
generation after generation, and had obtained, the right to 
see, to visit, to touch their public King. 

The Court had forgotten the popular conception of the 
Monarchy; but the populace necessarily preserves a longer 
memory than the rich. The thing was a menace, upon the 
whole not ill-humoured : a violent recollection that the King 
was the servant of the common weal, and its symbol, some- 
thing to be handled, met, and perhaps ordered. The mob, 

1 And what was more significative, the whole of the little wealthy reactionary minority was opposed to the 
projects, and signed a petition in proof of its opposition. 



THE WAR 409 

in whom atheists can see no more than a number of poor 
men, cried out its significant cries, against " Mr. and Mrs. 
Veto," making a popular jest of this pubUc power. But 
in those moments when one jest perhaps might have put the 
King at the head of popular emotion again, he and his wife 
remained no more than what the decline of the Monarchy 
had made them; individuals in peril, and courageous; not 
the Nation incarnate. 

If any Angel had for its function the preservation of the 
French Crown and Nation, that Angel, watching such a gulf 
between the people and the Monarchy, must have despaired 
of the latter's hope and of the former's survival: neverthe- 
less, despite that divorce, the French people after grievous 
wounds have survived. 



The last group which that roaring torrent of the rabble 
saw was the Queen and her children, her friends, especially 
Madame de Lamballe and the governess, the Duchess of 
Tourzel, a soldier or two, a minister and one or two others, 
crowded in the recess of a window behind a great table which 
had been pushed into the embrasure to defend them. The 
little heir to that Monarchy which had failed to understand 
sat on the table, very much afraid, and the Queen put on 
his head with loathing the red cap of liberty which the mob 
demanded. The day was sweating with heat, the cap 
was thick and dirty, and Santerre, who was there, passing 
them forward by bands in front of the table, a popular leader 
of the crowd, seems to have ordered that it should be 
removed. It was already nearly dark; it was half-past 
eight before that violent but not tragic tumult had sub- 
sided, and before the last of the street people went back out 



410 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

of the palace, which they thought rightly a public thing, on 
to the public paving which at least was still certainly theirs. 

Outside, during all that night, all the talk was of the war. 

When would the invaders cross the frontier and when 
would the first shock come .'' 



XVI 
THE FALL OF THE PALACE 

FROM HALF-PAST EIGHT IN THE EVENING OF THE aOrn JUNE, 1792, 
TO EIGHT IN THE MORNING OF THE 10th AUGUST, 1792 

THE noisy, good-natured, and very dangerous mob 
had gone at last; their final stragglers, gazing, 
curious and tired, at the pictures and the gilding (the 
trappings of their Public King in his great Public Palace), 
had wandered out. A few steps on the wide stone stairs of 
the central pavilion were still heard lazily descending. 
The dishevelled family was at rest. 

A little group of Deputies remained behind, and talked 
in low and careful voices to the King and Queen — prin- 
cipally to the Queen, for she was voluble. She was suave, 
though somewhat garrulously suave. "Would not some 
of these gentlemen come and see her put the Dauphin 
to bed.^" A familiar appeal made by the very wealthy to 
the middle class rarely fails. They followed respectfully and 
a little awkwardly to where, in a small bed out of her room, 
the child slept. She had him ready for bed in a few moments ; 
then she said to him smiling: 

*'Tell the gentlemen you love the Nation, darling." 

The drowsy child repeated mechanically, "I love the 
Nation." 

The Middle Class were enchanted. She laid him down, 
doubtless with every maternal charm; she turned to go 
before them, certainly with an exaggeration of that excessive 

411 



412 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

carriage which had delighted so many foreigners and depen- 
dants for now twenty years and had done much to lose her 
the respect of her French equals at the Court. The select 
committee of the Middle Class came after. 

"See what damage they have done: look at these doors!" 
The Deputies stooped solemnly to examine the broken panels 
and the hinges torn from their screws, the oak splinters 
showing dark against the white paint and the gold. They 
admitted serious damage — they regretted it. 

"Who is the proper authority to take note of this .5^ " 
They looked at one another ; then one of them, remembering 
the Constitution, Liberty and the rest of it, said: 

"Nowadays the proper authority before which to bring 
such misdemeanours is a Justice of the Peace." 

"Very well, then," she replied sharply, "send for one." 

A servant was despatched and returned with a Justice 
of the Peace. He gravely took written notes of all : 

^'Itern: the lower left panel broken; 

^'Item: the upper left panel cracked; 

''Item: the lower right hinge of the door torn off, and the 
post splintered." 

All was done in order, and they returned to find the King. 

The King was annoyed. They noticed him grumbling 
and moving his lips and teeth. He was even a little excited, 
but his training in names and faces, which is the acquired 
talent of high functionaries, served him well. He spoke 
with authority, knowing each of them and addressing 
them in turn, and after speaking of the mob he particularly 
complained that roughs climbed the palings of the Tuileries 
gardens and disturbed his privacy. The Queen interrupted 
from time to time to reproach them. "Why had they not 
prevented the procession of the mob through the palace? 



THE FALL OF THE PALACE 413 

Why, at least, had they rot given warning? The Depart- 
ment had done its duty! ^\Tiy not they?" The King 
continued in another tone, till, at last, some of them coming 
nearer home asked him for news of the armies. His dignity 
as the Executive (which he still was) forbade him any full 
replies : he had good news, very good news. . . . He 
could tell them no more. 

They suspected [we know] that there was no news at 
all . . . only a few packed, ill-ordered garrisons awaiting 
the attack; a long line in the field all the way from 
Belfort to sea, numbering but 80,000 men, and half of 
that an ill-clothed helter-skelter of broken companies: 
divided counsel, no plan, and, a few marches east, that slow 
concentration of the allies upon Coblenz which now drew to 
its close. 

So the Deputies left them : the sky was still full of light on 
this slowest night of the year, and Paris after the uproar of 
that bacchanalian Wednesday, the 20th of June, was silent. 



Meanwhile the South had risen. 

On that same Wednesday evening messengers from 
Montpellier had reached Marseilles; on Friday they were 
feasted, and when the banquet was over, one of the Mont- 
pellier men, Mireur, with a voice of bronze, rose to sing them 
a new song. It had come from the frontier, he said ; as for 
the air he did not know whence it was, but he thought 
(wrongly) from the opera "Sargines." He sang it, and the 
men that gathered outside the open windows to hear upon 
that summer evening, the guests within, and soon all the 
city, were swept by the MARSEILLAISE. 

The next day the Municipality of Marseilles met, 



414 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

determined upon spontaneous action in company with all 
the South : they decreed the raising of a volunteer battalion 
in spite of the Crown ; the next, the Sunday, when all were 
abroad and could read, the walls were placarded with the 
appeal to join. Monday and Tuesday the names poured in : 
a committee was chosen to pick only the best in character 
and health. Its work was at once accomplished; within 
twenty-four hours five hundred had been so chosen out of 
the throng of volunteers; within forty-eight they had been 
enrolled, drilled for hours, and separated by companies 
under ofl&cers of their choice. Three days of rapid organisa- 
tion and continued drilling followed: the route was traced, 
a time-table drawn up, the expenses estimated and provided. 
A section of guns (harnessed to men) with its caisson was 
drafted ; the stores and baggage were concentrated too. Upon 
Monday, the 2nd of July, at nightfall, a week after the first 
appeal, through a crowd of all the city that pressed on every 
side, they marched out by the northern gate of Marseilles 
singing their song. Next morning, just as the arid eastern 
hills began to show against the beginnings of the dawn, 
they entered Aix and had accomplished the first stage of 
their advance. "The Executive" — that is, the Crown — 
had warned every authority to disperse them and all such 
others, but the wind on Paris was from the South, and they 
and their song could not be hindered. 



Meanwhile, in the German town of Frankfort, there 
hummed a continually increasing crowd : the Emperor was to 
be crowned. Here, therefore, were all those who had a 
business with Austria, and here was, among others, a Swiss 
Huguenot, Mallet du Pan, upon whom more than upon any 



THE FALL OF THE PALACE 415 

other in that town the King of France and the Queen in her 
extremity depended. He was a journalist, very keen about 
accounts and probity in small money matters, of the bour- 
geoisie, sedate and perpetually attempting to understand 
the French people, now from this side, now from that: 
they interested him hugely. His work, however, was not to 
pursue this fascinating study, but to save the persons of the 
royal family he served : in this task he showed that same 
discipline and devotion which his compatriots were later to 
show under arms. He bore as his chief principles, as his last 
instructions, two orders: one order to keep the farce of the 
war going, and never to let it be hinted publicly or breathed 
that there was collusion between those who sent him and the 
invading Austrian power. The other order was this: to 
produce a manifesto to be signed from the camp of the invad- 
ing army, and to strike, as it was hoped, blind terror into the 
leaders of the National movement : the time had come (so it 
was imagined at the Tuileries) to threaten the worst and so 
tame Paris. 

He took his journey (but was scrupulous to give an exact 
account), left his family in Paris, passed through Geneva, 
his home, and now, by the end of June, was here at Frankfort. 

He had chosen his centre well, for upon Frankfort con- 
verged all news, and from Frankfort went out all orders: 
orders to Coblenz whence the armies were to march to the 
relief of the Tuileries; news from Brussels, which was of 
the first moment, for here Mercy d'Argenteau, the expert 
upon France, was ready every day to advise; here was the 
danger of attack from France most felt, and here, most 
central of all, was Fersen. 

Fersen heard regularly from Paris, wrote as regularly. 
Since the death of the King of Sweden his official position 



416 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

had been less, but those whose business it was to discover 
truth, the diplomats, knew that the last and most intimate 
thought of the royal family was to be reached through that 
channel alone. Austria and Prussia, Frankfort, that is, 
hardly acted upon his advice as to war (and in his diary he 
bitterly reproaches them for their neglect), but they sucked 
his knowledge — and to-day it is through him that we know, 
somewhat late, the principal truths upon those last few weeks 
of the French Monarchy. 

What did the Court of the Tuileries demand, and what 
will was behind it in so demanding ? 

Mallet du Pan was there at Frankfort with no credentials 
but a sheet of note-paper, and written on the top of it in 
Louis' hand two lines of writing unsigned. " The person 
who shall present this note knows my intentions; entire 
confidence may he put in what he says.''' What instructions 
had he ? 

Fersen was stationed at Brussels with an organised letter- 
service between the Tuileries and himself, written in secret 
ink, full, confidential and direct. All that he told Mercy 
or another went to Frankfort. What message was thus 
continually conveyed .^ I 

The demand from the Tuileries was an urgent demand 
for immediate invasion, and forerunning it, a drastic pro- 
clamation from the armed force at Coblenz : the will which 
inspired that demand was the will of Marie Antoinette. 

A man in flight could cover the distance from Paris to 
Brussels in two days; an urgent runner in three. Nor- 
mally the courier with his post-bag arrived on the morning 
of the fourth day. From Brussels to Frankfort worse roads, 
varying frontiers, and the German lethargy between them 
compelled news to a delay of close upon a week. 



THE FALL OF THE PALACE 417 

The ferment in Paris was rising; the Federals of the 
South were on the second day's march northward when, 
in the middle of the first week of July, the Queen, whose 
policy, or rather passion, could bear no more delay, wrote 
to Mercy and to Fersen separately two letters of great weight. 
These letters have never yet been given their due. The 
student should note them closely if he is to understand all 
that followed. 

The originals have, perhaps, not come down to us, but 
either man, Fersen or Mercy, noted their intents, and we 
thus know them. 

These letters Lasserez brought into Brussels, riding on the 
morning of Sunday, the 8th of July, and on the next day 
Mercy and Fersen, meeting, consulted on their purport. 
The Queen, with whom the project of such an engine was 
familiar, now definitely demanded a separate and nominal 
threat against the town of Paris, and a menace that the whole 
city should be held hostage by the invading German 
armies against the safety of her husband, herself and her 
child. This clause her judgment of the French character 
assured her to be efficacious; this clause she insisted should 
be added to the Manifesto which was even now preparing. 

It was upon July the 9th, I say, that the two men met 
and consulted upon the Queen's orders : that day they sent 
off command or counsel to the Rhine. 

On the 14th, while, in that same Paris, Louis was once 
more swearing to the Constitution upon the Champ de Mars, 
while hour for hour, far off on the Rhone a priest receiving 
the Marseillaise Battalion was adding his famous verse 
"of the Children'" to their famous hymn, in Frankfort the 
last of the Emperors was receiving with incredible 

• " Nous entrerons dans la Carrier^," &c., the best verse and the only poetry of the lot. 



418 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

magnificence the Crown of the Empire. The note 
inspired by Marie Antoinette was at the gates of his town. 

It entered: Mallet saw it. "Paris is to be destroyed by 
fire and the sword if the royal family are harmed": it was 
approved. From Frankfort it went back as a new clause 
to Coblenz; there it was incorporated in the Manifesto 
and signed. Immediately, the ink barely dry, it was pub- 
lished (upon the 25th of July) to the world, above the sig- 
nature of the Duke of Brunswick and in the name of that 
perfect and mechanical army which Prussia in especial could 
move with the precision of a physical law upon the capital 
that phrase had doomed. 

This was the origin of that famous Clause VIII. which 
ordered, if the Tuileries were forced, nay, if submission to 
the Royal Family was not at once made, that Prussia 
and Austria would take "an unforgettable vengeance," 
that Paris should be given up "to military execution and 
subversion, and the guilty rebels to the death they deserve." 

Such was Marie Antoinette's one piece of formulated 
policy — the first in which she had been able to act as clearly 
as she saw; it was also her last interference in political 
affairs. It had been lit by her hand, this match that fired 
the hesitating war: it had run its train through Brussels to 
Frankfort and back to Coblenz, lingering in no one place 
for a full day: now it had touched powder. Three days 
later the Manifesto was spoken of in Chalons ; secret copies 
were in print, the King received it. 

All Paris knew it, though not yet officially, when upon 
the evening of Sunday, the 29th of July, the dusty 
500 of Marseilles with their guns, crossing the bridge at 
Charenton, saw the distant towers of Notre Dame above 
the roofs of Paris and reached their goal. 



THE FALL OF THE PALACE 419 

Let soldiers consider the nature of this exploit, and politi- 
cians consider what that civilisation is whose comprehension 
I have shown throughout these pages to have so vainly 
fatigued so many aliens. 

The French of Marseilles had trained for but three days. 
They had left the Mediterranean in the height of a torrid 
summer; their organisation was self-made, their officers 
self-chosen, their discipline self-imposed. They had cov- 
ered five hundred miles of route, dragging their cannon, 
at the rate of precisely eighteen miles a day; they planked 
across the bridge at this the end of their advance, solidly, 
in formation, still singing their song, and at the roll-call 
every name was answered. . . . Their small numbers 
have made them appear to some historians insignificant 
(or a legend), to others rather a symbol of the military 
power in the populace which was to sack the palace than the 
attack itself, but they were more; they were, as tradition 
justly represents them, the framework of the force that 
decided the critical day of the Revolution, as their song was 
its soul. 

They marched in next morning by the St. Antoine Gate, 
with their drums and colours before them, the crowds of the 
suburbs blackening the site on which the Bastille had stood ; 
and half Paris, as it were, going out to meet them. They 
passed over to the Island, formed at the Mairie where Petion 
the Mayor greeted them; re-crossed the river (followed by the 
crowd) and took their places in the barracks assigned to 
them, upon a corner of what is now the Boulevard des 
Italiens ; from that evening the struggle between the City and 
the Monarchy had begun, and the few days' delay that was 
to follow was but a manoeuvring for position on either side, 
that of the populace and of the Tuileries. 



420 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

This last had now for long been steadily arming and 
was already strong. The King, the executive, held the 
arsenals, the regular army and a good half, even, of the auton- 
omous Militia. What was of more importance, the Crown 
and its advisers could rely not only upon the machinery 
but upon the devotion of the one well-disciplined corps which 
had not gone to the front: the Body-guard. These excel- 
lent mercenaries, nearly all Swiss by birth and nearly all 
ignorant of the French language, were precisely such 
material, human for courage and mechanical for obedience, 
as should overcome almost any proportion of civilians — 
especially such as might be spoilt by playing at soldiers. 
A recent law passed by the Legislative Assembly forbade 
their presence in Paris. The "Executive" parried such 
mere word of the "Legislative" by posting them in suburbs 
between which and the palace were only woods and fields. 
When danger was imminent, in the last hours of the truce, 
they were marched in and occupied the Tuileries, law or 
no law. 

Two objections to the strength of the King's position 
against the populace are urged (Napoleon, no mean judge, 
and an eye-witness, thought it the stronger, and his estimate 
of the King's forces brings them to about 6,000 men); 
these are, first, that no building can be held in the face of 
artillery, for the popular force had guns ; secondly, that it 
was but defensive, and that the assault, though repulsed, might 
return. The first of these is based on a misconception of the 
terrain and supply, the second upon a general ignorance 
of arms. 

For the first: there was no position whence artillery, even 
were it available in time, could be used against the long walls 
of the palace save by passing through narrow streets easy 



THE FALL OF THE PALACE 421 

for infantry to defend, and as a fact the guns were not avail- 
able to the populace either in sufficient amount or (what is of 
more importance) with sufficient training and supply. 
Guns, popularly manned and ill supplied, emplaced in the 
labyrinth which flanked the palace could be captured (and 
in fact were captured) by the trained infantry defending it. 
The short range alone would make certain the destruction 
of their teams by sharp-shooting from the upper windows. 

The second objection — a reply to which shows how 
considerable were the King's stake and chances — is met 
by the military consideration that nothing more needs a 
special organisation and training than a successful rally. 
An assault, if it is of any consequence, must be pressed hard; 
if it is fully repulsed, its head and energy are crushed at their 
highest vigour; the defeat is more crushing than that of a 
defensive which retires in time. This is generally true of 
soldiers in the field. It is always true of civilians. The 
doubts and defections that accompany a civil war, the con- 
version of the great body of cowards and the still larger 
majority of indifferent men, the claims of regular domestic 
life, the absence of a commissariat, the near presence of 
women and children, the contrast which the return of quiet 
after the blow presents to the pain and terror of a renewed 
struggle, make it, as it were, impossible for a defeated mob 
to return, after an interval, against the regular force which 
has repelled it; moreover, the regulars, once victorious, can 
pursue, scatter, and destroy the unorganised mass, while 
its leaders are arrested and judged ; nor is there an example 
in history of a popular rising which, when it has once broken 
against the defence of a regular force, has not been broken 
for good. 

The strategy of the Court was therefore sound, their 



422 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

calculation of victory was reasonable, and their chances of 
the best when the defence of the palace was organised in 
these first days of August. It was calculated that the 
populace even with artillery could do little against the 
palace: that the trained men would crush the mob once 
and for all. Had that defence succeeded, the advent of the 
foreigner, perhaps allied with one of the royal armies, was 
secure. That the defence of the palace failed was due 
partly to the lack of homogeneity in the garrisons, more to 
a lack of united leadership, but most of all to the unex- 
pected, incalculable and hitherto unequalled tenacity and 
determination of the insurgents. 

With every day the tension increased. The Federation 
delegates who had come from all over France to the Feast 
of the 14th of July, many of whom lingered in the city, 
clashed in the streets with courtiers, and with those who, 
whether by temperament or service, were still supporters 
of the Crown. 

Just when the Marseillais were entering Paris, Brunswick 
had broken camp and the march of the Allies into France 
had begun. Less than a hundred miles of flat road along 
the Moselle valley separated Brunswick from the outposts 
of the defence: Paris itself was hardly further from him 
than is York from London. Rapidity would put the first 
garrisons of the frontier into his hands within a week 
and even the tardiness which the Prussian calculation and 
the Prussian confidence involve, could hardly (it was thought) 
delay for a fortnight the news that the frontier was passed. 

In the passionate quarrel the enemy's character of invader 
was forgotten. Not only to the Court but to many who 
could now remember nothing but the ancient tradition 
of the Monarchy, the enemy seemed a saviour. Bands parade 



THE FALL OF THE PALACE 423 

ing the pavement by night threatened their fellow-citizens 
with Brunswick, songs threatening vengeance against the 
revolutionaries were heard abroad after carousals, and a 
continuous series of petty street fights, increasing in gravity, 
enlivened the attention of either side. 

Hardly were the Marseillais in Paris, for instance, when, 
that same evening of their arrival, after a banquet, a violent 
quarrel between them and a body of armed royalists had 
broken out. They carried their side-arms only, but blood 
was shed, and as the victims upon the defeated side of this 
brawl were carried to the Guard-room in the palace, the 
Queen, seeing blood, thought that the final struggle had 
begun. She was relieved to see the King go down amongst 
the wounded, staunching the blood of one with his hand- 
kerchief. Her women, fearing what she had feared, began 
crying each for one of hers. "Is my husband wounded.?" 
"Is mine.?" She could not forbear from one of those 
insults which had lost her the affection of so many, and from 
one of those reflections which proved how little she conceived 
the French nobility. "Ladies," she said to the noblewomen 
about her, "your husbands were not there." She had no 
further opportunity to revile them: it was perhaps the last 
expression of her contempt for a people whom she believed 
to have grown incapable. 

Either side continued to arm. The heat, growing steadily 
in intensity, had bred by the 3rd of August a very thunder- 
ous calm, when the King announced to the Assembly the 
terms of Brunswick's Manifesto. It was received in silence, 
and those who least knew and know the city thought and still 
think that the news was met with indifference. But during 
that night, while a furious storm struck Paris time and time 
again with lightning, one workman's suburb, St. Marcel, sent 



424 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

word to another, St. Antoine: "If we march to the palace, 
will you ?'* In the midst of the thunder, messengers returned 
saying: "We will!" And in the night as they went and 
came, they passed men bearing the dead whom the lightning 
had struck and killed. Very late and before the growling of 
the thunder had ceased, certain of the Marseillais must 
go to the walls of the palace and shout the chorus of 
their song. 

Next day they asked for ball-cartridge. Sergent, the 
official guardian of the Militia ammunition-reserve, had 
been struck in the face when he had gone, as his duty com- 
pelled him, to the palace a fortnight before; he had been 
struck because his politics were known. Should the insur- 
rection fail, his signature for rebel ammunition would be 
his death warrant. Nevertheless, remembering that 
blow, he signed; and the arsenal served out ten rounds 
a man to the Battalion of Marseilles. They crossed the 
river so armed, and were received at the Cordeliers,' which 
was Danton's fief, and Danton restrained them till such 
poor and hasty organisation as could be undertaken should 
be effected. It was the end of the week which had seen 
their entry into Paris, and nothing had been done. The 
Tuileries continued to arm, the populace to convene, and 
between the combatants the Parliament daily lost its power 
and grew bewildered. 

On Sunday, at Mass, always a public occasion in the 
palace, men passed and re-passed each other in the gallery, 
and there were quarrels. This also was the last time in 
which the Monarchy was treated as a general thing — with 
the next morning its isolation began. On Monday the King 
was begged to fly, at least to Compiegne: the road was 

1 Now the Clinical Museum opposite the faculty of Medicine in the University. 



THE FALL OF THE PALACE 425 

guarded and it was an easy ride if he went alone round by 
Poissy and the north. He refused. On Tuesday the last 
preparations were made in the suburban garrisons of the 
Crown soldiers. On Wednesday, the 8th, in the morning, 
the Swiss Guard was warned that on the morrow before dawn 
it must be accoutred. 

The Parliament, more and more bewildered, vacillated and 
was hardly heard as the two antagonists rose from their 
places to fight. The deputies refused all action. It had 
been proposed to them to condemn La Fayette for a hurried 
journey he had taken to Paris after the last insurrection 
to defend the King. They had refused by a very great 
majority. Now, on this 9th of August, the fatal eve of 
the struggle, they debated an academic point — whether 
the King should abdicate or no; they adjourned it to dine 
. . . and after dinner they did not meet. 

But all the while upon that Thursday evening, troops 
were afoot along the Rueil road; th^ doors of the Palace 
were open to men who en^^red one bv one, armed and were 
stationed; the sound of cirpenters v^as heard in the Long 
Gallery of the Louvre, sawing the planking of the floors, by 
night, to make a gap between the Louvre and the Tuileries ;' 
mounted police rode up in squads to the courtyard and 
took their stations; there was also the rumbling of waggons. 
In the sections south of the river and eastwards St. Antoine 
and St. Marcel were moving; wherever the people had 
strained at the leash too long, the popular assembles sat in 
their close halls choosing the men who should take the 
Guildhall by right of the City's decision and in spite of the 
law, and proclaim the insurrection. 

The last of the day declined and the night came, but 

• The gap was six feet broad. Too narrow, for the insurgents next day leaped it and bridged it, and by 
that entry forced the Tuileries. 



MARIE ANTOINETTE 



the unnatural heat would not decline, and the open windows 
all about, the lights shining from them, and the vigil which 
so many kept, gave the effect of an illumination. 



That night, short and stifling as it was, was drowsy; a 
necessity for sleep oppressed the city. Danton himself, 
in the thick of the rising, attempted a moment of repose; 
he had hardly lain down when he was roused again. The 
watchers in the palace felt midnight upon them and would 
have slept. The barrack-beds which filled the attics in their 
regular lines were strewn with men; the gentry who had 
volunteered, certain also of the Militia, lay silent in the 
darkness, their muskets slung beside them, their large allow- 
ance of cartridges served. Below in the great rooms and on 
the stairways groups of mixed soldiery lay huddled, servants 
armed, and policemen: every kind of man. The Regulars 
who formed the core of this force, the Swiss, lounged in their 
bare guard-room or sat silent upon the stone benches of the 
yard ; some few files of them stood at ease upon the stairs of 
the lesser hall. 

Upon this silence there crashed at about a quarter to one 
o'clock the noise of cannon. The report was hard and close 
at hand — it came from the Pont Neuf at the further end of 
the Louvre, and the united fabric of the long walls trembled 
to it; the heavy pictures and the mirrors shook. The six 
thousand who garrisoned the Tuileries expected an imme- 
diate advance of the insurrection : for a moment the whole 
palace was roused. Those battalions of Militia which had 
been camped in the garden for a reserve began to file in by 
the central doors: the cavalry mounted to take up their 
stations at the narrow issues of the Louvre, and everywhere 



THE FALL OF THE PALACE 427 

the lights moving before the windows of the vast fa9ade 
showed the ordering of men. 

This general stir had hardly arisen when it was perceived 
that this first shot had been but a signal, for to the call of 
that cannon no other succeeded, but almost immediately 
the steeples of the city trembled to the first notes of bells. 

The deep and heavy bells, that had for centuries raised the 
alarm of invasion or of fire, began to boom just east of the 
University; they were answered by the peal of St. Anthony 
over the river, by the tocsins of St. John and St. Gervase; 
St. Laurence rang, and southward upon the night boomed 
the huge tower of the Abbey, which had heard the same 
sound nine hundred years before, when the dust of the 
Barbarian march hung over Enghien, and smoke went up 
from burning farms all down the Seine. The Cathedral 
followed: thenceforward no one could hear the striking of 
the hours, for the still air of the night pulsed everywhere 
with the riot of the bells. Two sounds alone could pierce 
the clamour: the high bugle-call to which the French still 
mobilise, and the sullen fury of the drums. The horses, 
therefore, of the defenders in the courts of the palace, the 
continual clattering of their hoofs upon the paving, the 
clink of metal as the lines were formed, the tramp of the 
reinforcements arriving — all the movement of the six thou- 
sand who gathered to support the Crown, was set to this 
music, and the air they breathed was full of the noise of the 
bells. 

Yet for some hours after the posts had been taken the 
advent of the rebels was expected in vain. Paris seemed 
empty, or full only of this increasing and ominous sound. 
Of men there was no trace. The stone courtyards before 
the palace and the streets that led to the Square of the 



4^8 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

Carrousel were silent. They lay open and deserted under 
the sky, and so remained even when the first stars paled 
and when there was already a hint of dawn. A doubt rose 
among the Royalists, first whispered, then openly spoken, 
and leading at last to jests: the insurrection had missed 
fire; the bells had failed. No voice of the insurgents had 
been heard, nor had any rider brought news of their 
approach, when the last of the stars had gone and the 
Militia companies, still remaining as a reserve in the western 
gardens, saw the day rise gorgeously beyond the palace they 
were to defend. 

In a small room whose window looked toward the east, 
the Queen, with some few of her women, waited for the 
day. The ceiling was low, and its air of privacy gave some 
little respite from the strain of the eve and of the morrow. 
She lay upon a sofa, but she could not sleep ; she spoke but 
rarely and that in low tones, and vaguely watched the night. 
With the first grey of the morning she rose, unrested, and 
bade them dress her boy, the child who alone in that great 
house had slept throughout the alarms. Then, under the 
growing light, she saw the Princess Elizabeth near her, who 
called her and took her to a window whence she might watch 
the rising of the sun. They stood together beside the open 
casement gazing at the city in silence. 

Early as was the hour (it was but little past four) the 
tone of the air already promised a blinding summer's day. 
The end of darkness had lifted no mist from the gardens. 
The last heats of yesterday blended with the new warmth 
of the sunrise that stretched bright red across the far sub- 
urbs where the populace stood to arms ; behind the con- 
fused high roofs and spires of their capital the two Princesses 
saw advancing at last great beams of power and, enflaming 



THE FALL OF THE PALACE 429 

the city, an awful daybreak. The younger woman was 
afraid and spoke her thought, saying that it looked like 
some great disaster, a burning spread before them. 

Now that it was broad day the vigour of the Queen 
returned. She became again the will of the defence, and 
its leader — if it had a leader. She had not expected 
defeat even in the worst silences of the night; with the new 
day she was confident of success. 

The commander of the Paris Militia, one Mandat, who 
had lately come by rote to that function, she knew to be 
sound. He had garrisoned the bridge-head by which alone 
the transpontine mob could cross the river to the palace; 
his cavalry also held the narrow arch at the Guildhall, by 
which alone the east end could come. Petion now became 
the mayor of Paris, who had been summoned to the palace 
for a hostage, had gone — the Parliament had demanded 
him — but Mandat remained and his presence sufficed for 
her. Upon that presence she relied : when she came to seek 
him she found that he too had disappeared. The Town 
Hall had summoned him twice, and twice he had refused. 
At the third summons he had gone, suddenly, unescorted, 
"to account for his command." She began to wonder, 
but her hope was still maintained. She crossed to 
the room where she could find her husband, and she 
engaged upon the last act which freedom permitted her to 
command. 

Still pursued by memories of what the Court had been, 
she determined to show the King to his subjects, and to 
present a sight which should exalt his soldiery and linger 
in history as the appeal which saved him. 

The King obeyed her summons: he had better have 
remained to repose, for she found him but recently awakened 



430 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

from a stupor into which he had fallen at the end of the 
night when all his garrison had risen to the alarm. 

The servitors, the gentlemen, the Militia, and the strict 
Swiss beside them saw, as they stood drawn up in a ramb- 
ling line upon the western garden terrace, the figure for 
which they were to die. 

He appeared at the main central door, weary, dishevelled, 
and, as it were, aged. His violet coat recalled the periods 
of mourning. The shadow in which he stood enhanced 
the sombre colour of his clothing and the pallor of his 
freckled face; his stoutness and his habitually sanguine 
temper rendered that pallor unnatural and suggested catas- 
trophe or disease. His paunch was obvious, his hair 
deplorable. With such an introduction to their loyalty he 
wandered heavily from end to end of the line. There was 
a laugh — by one light-head he was covertly insulted as 
he passed — he was certainly of less and less moment in their 
eyes with every step he took in this unhappy review. When 
it abruptly ended, old Mailly went down stiffly on one knee 
and tendered his sword, then stiffly rose again. Again in 
the ranks some one laughed. From this scene the King 
returned to his room in silence. 

She also, the Queen, returned from it angry and in tears, 
the more embittered that she herself had designed the 
thing. 

The first news that met her on her return to the palace 
was the death of Mandat. As the details were told her she 
understood, though vaguely, what a blow had fallen. He 
had reached the Town Hall "to account for his command,'* 
but had found there, not the hesitating constitutional body 
which he expected and which had a right to summon the 
head of the Militia. He had found instead a ring of new 



THE FALL OF THE PALACE 431 

faces, the insurrectionary Commune: the Revolution, 
maddened and at bay, had glared at him across the lights 
of the hall. As he went down the steps to the street, blinded 
by that vision of terror, some lad shot him dead, and with 
that deed the whole plan of the defence crumbled. The 
bridge-head and the archway were abandoned. 

The crowds of the south and east gathered as the mor- 
ning advanced ; their way w^as now clear, and yet, to those 
watching from the palace windows, it still seemed as the 
sun rose higher that the movement had failed. Seven 
chimed above the central portico; it chimed slowly upon 
bells of nearly a hundred years; the half-hour sounded, and 
still the courts of the Carrousel lay empty. But the deserted 
air was ominous. No street cries rose from the neighbour- 
ing market-stalls. There w^as no sound of workmen upon 
the new building of the bridge' down river; the regular 
sawing of stone and the ring of hammered iron were silent. 



At last a head showed above the high wooden palings that 
separated the courtyard from the square. Then another, 
the heads of ragged street-boys, who peered over, standing 
on their companions' shoulders. A stone was thrown. 
One of the sentries aimed, and in a twinkling the dirty, 
beardless faces disappeared. As yet no shot had been fired. 

A noise like that of swarming bees came confusedly from 
the quays, muffled by the intervening w^ing of the Louvre. 
It approached, still dull and blanketed by the vast building; 
for a moment it was swallowed up in the deep passage 
beneath the Louvre; then, with an immediate and over- 
whelming roar it burst into the square of the Carrousel. 

1 Now called the Pont de la Concorde. 



432 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

Some one in command must have dashed upstairs, to where 
from the higher attic windows he could overlook the hoard- 
ing : such an one saw the Carrousel crammed with a violent 
whirlpool of men that seethed and broke against the great 
oaken gates of the yard. Even as he looked the gates gave 
way or were opened — which he could hardly distinguish in 
the press. The inner court filled as the torrent of arms 
surged through the entry. At a window of the upper floor 
certain gentlemen who had volunteered knelt, with their 
muskets upon the crowd below. 
They waited for the order to fire. 



XVII 
THE TEMPLE 

THE vanguard of the mob came pouring in. 
They swarmed through the arches under the Long 
Gallery and the main body of them still came swing- 
ing up to it along the riverside. 

The sun, well up and brazen, touched the metal about 
them and sent dancing gleams from pikes and curved hooks 
bound to staves. Before that uneven crowd the long 
shadows of morning stood out sharply, thrown along the 
uneven paving of the narrow quays. They sang or jested: 
they jostled and could not order themselves. There were 
no soldiers among this first batch of the insurrection, nor 
even a body of the half-trained Militia, nor had they any 
guns. So they swarmed through the public archways 
under the Long Gallery, so they packed and surged in the 
square of the Carrousel. Before them were the walls of the 
central courtyard of the palace and a great gate shut against 
them. 

Of the fourteen guns that the palace commanded, five 
faced them in this court, ready to fire should the crowd 
burst in. Three were advanced in the emptiness of the 
square; two, in support, were just outside the main door, 
whence the central staircase of the Tuileries swept up to 
the royal rooms. At that door the lads who had climbed 
the outer walls of the courtyard could also now see some 
fevv' of the Guard drawn up in formation outside the palace 

433 



434 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

door and already retiring; the rest were massed behind 
these in the hall : the solid body of Swiss who were the kernel 
of the defence. 

These thousand mercenaries and more, immovable men, 
had in their attitude something at once of the grotesque 
and the terrible. Stiff and strict as lifeless things in their 
red and white, tight hose and musket erect and firm, they 
were ready first for the volley, then for the charge , and every 
man (in that time, when ten rounds was thought a day's 
provision) carried forty rounds upon him. The pale, 
unmoved faces of the mountaineers were here and there 
diversified by some livelier face, their rough-cut hair by the 
careful barbering of the wealthy, for there were gentry of 
the King's who had borrowed uniforms of the Guard and 
had slipped in among them and now stood part of the 
silent rank. 

The roaring of voices in the Carrousel beyond the walls of 
the courtyard increased continually; the other noise of the 
sea of Paris rose with it every moment, and on the first floor 
where the Royal Family and some few advisers sat, all this 
gathering crowd outside the courtyard walls was watched by 
those who were responsible for the unity of the nation in 
face of the advancing invasion, and for the person of what 
was still the King. Chief of those so responsible was Roe- 
derer. He stood there for that new public authority, the 
elected county-body which alone had legal power; he con- 
sidered only the necessary survival of the King. 

Already, at dawn, he had advised that the King should 
leave the defence to others; now, hours later, as the mob 
and its noise swelled and swelled, he insisted once more. 
It was but a personal act whose value in the military thing 
that followed only those present could judge, nay, only those 



THE TEMPLE 435 

who knew, as only contemporaries can know them, the per- 
sonal forces at work. There was no capitulation here. . . . 

But in the judgment of the greatest master of war, 
Louis leaving the defence by those few yards deter- 
mined the issue; for it was Napoleon, himself perhaps a 
witness, who said that if the King had then been seen on 
horseback before the palace, his troops would have had the 
better of the fight. But the King did what he thought was 
necessary for the moment of peril, and guarded his family. 
He said, "Let us go." As he passed through the corridors 
of the palace down to the main doors upon the garden side, 
he said to those who heard him, "We shall be back soon." 
He believed it and they also. None saw in this precaution 
an element of defeat, and yet that sort of shadow which doom 
throws before itself as it advances vaguely oppressed the 
palace. 

The King, the Queen, and their children, Madame de 
Lamballe and Madame de Tourzel, the governess, the hand- 
ful of ministers and friends, had nothing to do with the 
military scheme of the defence. Louis had thought it pru- 
dent, and his advisers also, that those few steps should be 
taken between the palace and the Parliament House that 
lay beyond the palace garden, and as they w^ent along the 
broad garden way between the formal trees, few thought, if 
any thought, that those few minutes in the privacy of their 
grounds were final. Later, all called it the beginning or the 
presage of defeat. 

The King walked solidly on in front by himself, mur- 
muring from time to time that the leaves had begun to 
fall very early that year. The Dauphin, holding the Queen's 
hand, trotted by her side and amused himself by pushing 
away with his feet those same dead leaves, until, the sickly 



436 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

little chap growing weary, a Grenadier of the Royal Militia, 
which formed their little escort, lifted the Prince in his arms 
against his blue coat. The Queen's face, mottled red and 
white in the violence she did herself by that retreat, was now 
disfigured by tears, and the crowd beyond the palisades 
of the garden, seeing Royalty thus taking refuge, broke 
through a gate and made a hubbub round the Parliament 
door. But a couple of dozen members made a way through 
them and met the royal party, assuring them of an asylum 
within. With some little pushing, complaints, and speechi- 
fying, they got them into safety, and the King so took his 
place beside the Speaker in that great oval of the riding- 
school in the early but hot and sunlit morning, the 
Queen and the children behind him upon the bench of 
the Ministers; and there the Grenadier gently put down 
the child. 

Vergniaud was in the chair, and, when the King had 
spoken his few words to the Parliament, it was Vergniaud 
who assured him of the protection of the laws. But there 
was a prejudice too strong in volume, of too recent a date, 
and too lively in character, to permit of the open presence 
of royalty at their debates. Royalty must, at least in name, 
withdraw, and Louis and his wife and the children and 
some few of their attendants, consented to enter a little box 
where the shorthand reporters of a certain journal had 
usually their place. It overlooked the hundreds of the 
Assembly from a little above their level, and was so placed 
at th esouth-eastern corner of the great ellipse that the sun, 
creeping round, was bound to beat upon it through the high- 
arched southern windows as the day wore on. The grating 
was removed, they were attempting some repose in that 
strict lodgment, when the sudden sound that all so tensely 



THE TEMPLE 437 

awaited broke out beyond the garden trees. The firing had 
begun. It was a little after nine. 

Cabined as they were within the little box, whose outer 
wall gave upon the gardens of the Palace, they could hear, 
trembling through the stone and noisy through the open 
windows on that hot August morning, the rattle of the mus- 
ketry of the defence. The Marseillais had come up in their 
turn; they had come into the courtyard. They had par- 
leyed with the Swiss. The gentry at the broad windows 
of the first floor, each group twelve front, three deep, had 
opened fire to stop that parleying. But of what so passed 
the Parliament and the little party in the reporters' box 
knew nothing. They heard but one discharge of cannon, 
booming dull, and after that a silence. The debate in the 
hall of the Parliament ceased. It was the moment when 
the Swiss had rallied and when the defenders of the palace 
had swept the populace from the Carrousel, and had so 
thought to have ended the day. There were many in that 
hall who thought it ended also: mobs are thus often 
defeated in a few moments. The silence lasted. 

Two more discharges of cannon might have been — and 
were perhaps thought to be in the anxious house and by 
the much more anxious group that strained their ears in the 
reporters' box — the last volley against a flying crowd. 
It was not so : these cannon were the two pieces of Marseilles 
leading a return of the mob, and thenceforward, with every 
moment for a quarter of an hour, for twenty minutes, the 
fusillade and the roar of approaching thousands swelled like 
the calculated swell of an orchestra. The Queen heard, 
where she sat in the corner of the tiny lodge, the whistle of 
grape, the thud of solid shot against the walls, the crash 
of glass and all that increasing roar which told her that the 



438 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

populace had returned like a tide, flooding the courts of 
the palace and invading its very doors. For some very- 
few moments they heard that struggle maintained. 

Then it was that Roederer, rightly or wrongly, a lawyer, 
not a soldier, determined that the day was lost. In the 
spirit which had made him, in his capacity as a high official 
of the Local Government, twice advise the King to retire, 
and the second time succeed in that advice, in that same 
spirit he now advised a capitulation. Perhaps he hoped 
by such a compromise (could it arrive in time) to save the 
Monarchy. More probably he deemed the Monarchy 
secure, and thought only by this capitulation to save the 
House in which the Parliament sat and in which the Crown 
had taken refuge from direct assault by the mob. At any 
rate there was written, and presumably in the King's pres- 
ence, the hurried word or two which ordered the Guard to 
cease firing, and that scrap of paper Louis signed.' It 
was the last act of the French Monarchy. 

This order was conveyed to the upright and soldierly 
DTlerville: it filled him with contempt and anger. He 
took the paper, pocketed it, forced his way round with dif- 
ficulty to the further side of the Tuileries, saw that the de- 
fence, though now beaten back to the very doors, was still 
maintained, and so far from communicating the King's com- 
mand, determined, as many a soldier before has done in 
such a fix, to disobey. He continued to direct the battle. 

Though the populace had rushed the doors and in part 
the river wing of the palace, a furious hand-to-hand still 
raged. The staircase was not yet carried; that wing of the 
populace which had leapt the gap in the flooring and had 
boarded the Pavilion de Flore from the Long Gallery had 

1 The authenticity of this document is discussed, or rather alluded to, in the reproduction of it which 
appears as a frontispiece. 



THE TEMPLE 439 

not yet fought its way into the Tiiileries. The great body 
of the insurgents was still massed outside in the square; 
a steady fire was still maintained upon them from the 
windows of the palace. It was not until the rooms were at 
last flooded by the advancing mob and the staircase was held, 
that D'Herville faltered. He was turned. The assault had 
begun to verge upon a massacre. Of one-half company of the 
popular Militia, all but five had been hit at one door alone in 
the upper rooms. Before the main door within a few yards 
of it, 400 men — if we may trust those who most desired to 
hide the full numbers — 400 men at least lay heaped. 
Within, the mob was taking its revenge and the sacking 
had begun before D'Herville showed that scrap of 
paper to the Guard. This second command, also, the Swiss 
obeyed, as they had obeyed the first command to die. 

They fell back out of the palace in order, this remnant of 
a high discipline; they passed down the main broad avenue 
of the Gardens steadily : the covering volleys of their retreat 
came very sharp and clear just outside the windows of the 
Parliament. Those within heard their steady tramp, until 
at last that tramp turned to a scuffle ; there were crunchings 
upon the gravel, confused scrambles upon the lawns, choked 
cries and fugitive running; they had broken by the round 
pond. 

Far off along the riverside one could still hear a rhythm 
and a tramp of men. It was the marching of the Mar- 
seillese with their prisoners: for they had made prisoners 
and disdained to massacre. They had saved somewhat 
more than a company of the Guard and bore them escort. 
The fight was done. 

It was just after ten o'clock. In those two hours, or 
little more, of doubt, in that one hour of combat, there 



440 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

had perished many thousands of men and the tradition of 
nine hundred years. 



The day passed without wind or air, a day of increasing 
clamour. The conquering populace entered by deputations, 
and with the rhetoric of the poor and of their leaders before 
the bar of the manege. They demanded and obtained the 
suspension of Louis "till the National Convention should 
be called." They brought spoils religiously to that bar, 
" lest they should be thought thieves." They harangued and 
they declaimed — by the mouth of leaders. 

Far off in the chapel of the palace a young man at the 
organ played the "Dies Irse" for his whim. Those who 
had so lately been the masters sat huddled in the box of 
the Logographe. 

If the modern reader would have some conception of 
it, this "loge" of the shorthand reporter, let him think if he 
is rich, of a box at the opera, or, if he is poor, of a cabin upon 
a steamer, such was its size. 

Louis XVI. and one or two of his armed gentlemen, the 
Queen, the little children and their governess, sat packed 
hour after hour in that little den ; through the torn grating 
of it they could see the vast oval of the riding-school, its 
sweep of benches under the candle-light. It was a huge pit 
from whence in a confusion of speech and clamour rose the 
smoke of their fate. 

The summer night had been so tedious and so burning 
that in their ten-foot square of a hutch the refugees had 
hardly endured it. The little child had fallen into a stupid 
sleep upon his mother's knees, and a sweat unnatural to 
childhood so bathed his exhausted face that the Queen would 



THE TEMPLE 441 

not let it remain. She turned for a handkerchief to a gentle- 
man of theirs : he gave her his — but there was the blood of 
a wound upon it. 

Midnight had passed, and they still sat thus packed and 
buried ; before them still rose the sonorous cries of the invad- 
ing mob, the interjections of the Parliament, the rhetoric 
of the last speeches. The hundreds of lights still flamed in 
the double chandeliers of the enormous hall; the roof and 
the planks of the half-empty benches around the arena still 
sent back echoes. 

It was two in the morning before the doors could open on 
them, and with the sweep of cooler air came the roar of the 
populace still on guard after all these eighteen hours. The 
crowd pressed against the railings as a strong escort hurried 
the King and Queen across a little corner of the gardens to 
the deserted monastery next door. There were large candles 
thrust into the barrels of chance muskets: the night was 
calm and they could burn. By that faint and smoky light, 
which but just caught the faces of the crowd beyond, they 
hurried in to the door of the Feuillants. 

For many months no one had trodden the corridor of 
the place; the bricks of the flooring beneath their feet lay 
unevenly. The blank and whitewashed walls, cracked and 
neglected, were pierced by four such similar little doors as 
monasteries use for an entrance to their cells, and in those 
four bare cells the Parliament had hurriedly provided what 
furniture the old house afforded. 

The Dauphin had awakened for a moment in the fresh 
air, and had smiled; he had said, so that those near could 
hear him: "I am to sleep in mamma's room to-night!" 
His mother had promised it him as a reward during 
the dreadful day; he slept when the doors closed on 



442 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

them, and his sister slept too. The Queen was too 
angry for repose. 

She saw the monk's bed of the cell, little and hard; she 
saw the mouldy green paper on the wall; she stamped for 
one last futile time into the King's presence beyond the 
partition to cry that things should surely have turned 
differently. 

"The Marseillese should have been driven back!" 

Louis had never failed to meet her anger when it rose, by 
a stolid truth. "Who was to drive them back ?" he said. 

Then she, who had not understood the armed nature of 
the struggle, but only her own fierce desire, turned back and 
threw herself upon the narrow bed of her refuge. 

The day already glimmered. One could see the trees of 
what had been but yesterday her royal garden, and one could 
see the palace beyond through the dirty windows of the little 
room. The sun rose and showed her her misery more 
clearly. She could not sleep. It was not till the light in 
the east had risen above the many roofs of the Tuileries 
and had already thrown a slit of bright shining aslant into 
the room, that there fell upon her less a slumber than an 
unhappy trance of exhaustion. 

There was silence while she slept. The mob had gone 
home exhausted. The carts, which had worked all night 
round the palace and in the gardens picking up the 
wounded and the dead, lumbered no more, and their crunch- 
ing upon the gravel of the alleys had ceased. No wheels 
rattled in the Rue St. Honore as yet, and the few that still 
maintained the sitting in the Parliament were attended by 
no more in the Tribunes than a few sleepy beings watching to 
the end. Outside in the still air all that could be heard 
was the early piping of birds. 



THE TEMPLE 44S 

For that little space Marie Antoinette lay broken but 
forgetful of the dreadful day. 

Her sister-in-law, in whom self-sacrifice was permanent, 
watched her pitifully so lying for one hour and another. 
Then she woke the children and dressed them for the new 
day, silently, so as to spare their mother's sleep, but that sleep 
did not endure. The Queen raised herself unrefreshed, and, 
when she saw the children, remembered their promise and 
their fall and said: *' It will all end with us! ..." 

With the morning some succour began to arrive from 
their own class, who pitied them, especially from foreigners. 
Lady Gower's little son, younger than the Dauphin, was yet 
of the same measure. The child could therefore wear the 
change that was sent him from the English Embassy. The 
King was supplied by a captain of his Swiss, a man as cor- 
pulent as himself. The Queen could get linen at least from 
the Duchesse de Gramont. Her watch and purse were stolen , 
left behind or lost, but there was plenty of money; one of 
her women had no less than twenty pounds upon her : there 
was no need to look further. 

At ten an escort brought that broken family back to the 
reporters' box. And so daily the long fatigue was endured 
and the mean lodging of the night. All the Saturday, all the 
Sunday, the debates continued in their presence. They saw, 
they half-understood the quarrel between the city, which 
had determined to be master of their persons, and the 
Parliament, which refused to forego its sovereignty. They 
heard the decree passed that overthrew the statues of the 
Kings throughout Paris. They heard that the palace of 
the Luxembourg was to be their sumptuous prison; then 
the long argument against that building, the perpetual 
demand of the city for their custody; the suggestion 



444 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

of this place and that: the Archbishop's palace — at 
last the Temple. 

They saw the deputation of the city, with the Mayor at 
its head, insisting; they heard the Parliament give way, and 
knew by Sunday evening, that Paris would hold them 
hostages. 

On the morrow — a fatal 13th — their Court was removed 
from them: a few friends only were allowed to remain. 
Under the wan light of evening two great carriages — still 
royal, but their drivers' livery gone and a dull grey replacing 
it — stood before the door of the Feuillants. The act of 
imprisonment had begun. 

The heavy coaches rolled along the paving. The scene 
was that of a crowd freed from labour at such an hour, 
thousands on either side, and a dense escort pushing its 
armed column through. The sunset and the long twilight 
were full of halts and summonses; Petion, with his head 
thrust through the window, was insisting on a way for 
Authority : there was a noise of men struggling, sometimes 
to see, sometimes to save their feet, snatches of songs, 
cries. 

The distance was not quite a mile and a half. For over 
two hours the coaches pushed and fought their passage up to 
the Place Vendome, where the statue of Louis XIV. lay 
fallen: past the wide boulevards whose width did nothing 
to disperse the crowd : down at last along the narrow lane of 
the Temple, till they came to the great pillars of the porch. 

All this while the Queen sat silent. Her husband and 
she and her royal children were still given honour — sat on 
the front seat of the great carriage; but the ladies who yet 
followed the Court, the governess of the Children of France, 
were indignant that Authority should have passed to the 




L 

• THE TOWER OF THE TEMPLE AT THE TIME OF THE 
ROYAL FAMILY'S IMPRISONMENT 



THE TEMPLE 445 

officials, and that these should sit wearing their hats of office 
before France-in -Person. So also when the Royal Family 
walked across the courtyard to the steps of what had once 
been Artois' Palace of the Temple, the deputation of the 
Commune there present to receive them kept their heads 
covered and insisted upon their new authority, calling Louis 
*'Sir," not "Sire," and preserving in his sight that austere 
carriage which he had thought the peculiar appanage of 
kings. 

They went up the great staircase, lit splendidly as for a 
feast, lit as it had been for Artois in the days she so well 
remembered: the doors shut as upon guests assembled. 
They followed their warders down a short, walled way 
through the open night, and saw before them at last, with 
lamps in every old crochet of the corners, and every window 
ablaze, the enormous mass of the Tower. 



To the north of the square keep which was the main out- 
line of the Tower, a second building, an afterthought of the 
latter Middle Ages, had been added. It leant up against its 
larger neighbour, forming a kind of pent-house ; its four storeys 
were far lower than those of the stronghold — the rooms into 
which each storey was partitioned were necessarily smaller 
and less convenient than those which they were to occupy 
later in the main tower: it was nevertheless necessary to 
lodge them here for the first few weeks, because this annex 
alone was furnished. It had been the residence of the Archi- 
vist in charge; its main room had been his drawing-room; 
the whole was ready for an immediate occupation. 

To these Princesses and their train there was a portentous 
novelty in such a place. The King, a man, and one fond of 



446 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

hunting in all weathers, self-centred, negligent of his person, 
careless of any luxury save that of the table, saw nothing 
sharp in these surroundings : indeed, his sex, especially when 
it is leisured, can take what it finds in a campaign or 
accident with no great shock. But the women, who had in 
every moment of their lives been moulded by magnificence 
and ease, could not understand the place at all. Varennes 
had been a hurly-burly; the wretched three days just ended 
at the Feuillants a violent interlude ; for the rest their pains 
and terrors of the past three years had been played upon a 
gorgeous scene. They had slept for a thousand nights of 
peril in very soft and bulging beds whose frames were thick 
with gilding, beds whose canopies were splendidly high and 
curtained like thrones. They had been surrounded for a 
thousand days of peril by silent servants trained and dressed 
in gorgeous livery for their work. They had looked out on 
great ordered gardens, and had walked over the shining 
floors of the palace. That was their protection: a habit 
of grand circumstance and continuous exalted experience 
against which the occasional horror and the strain of their 
lives could make no impression. 

To-night, in the unaccustomed stillness of the Temple 
enclosure, they sat silent in the knowledge that these low 
roofs and common walls must be a kind of home for them. 
All was at first insupportable; the King's sister, sleeping 
on a ground floor, in a room which once the cooks of the 
house inhabited: next to her through the wall, the Guard 
Room ; the Queen, the royal children and their governess, 
cooped up in a couple of small bedrooms fifteen feet square 
or less, preparing their own beds and the Dauphin's, were in 
a new, worse world. The poor Princesse de Lamballe, 
with her own great virtue of fidelity surviving all her inani- 



THE TEMPLE 447 

ties, put a truckle bed for herself in the dark little passage 
between the two rooms and slept there, as a dog sleeps at 
the door of its mistress. Nor did even this society endure. 
A week had not passed when the officers came by night to 
read a new decree, and to separate the Duchesse de Tourzel 
and the Princesse de Lamballe from their masters, saying: 
"There must be no one here but Capetians." Then the 
complete isolation of their lives, a new habit, of settled hours 
and monotonous exactitude, began. 

This life reflected as in a quiet mirror the chaos of the 
enormous struggle which was being fought out beyond the 
walls of the Temple. They were prisoners and yet unre- 
stricted ; confined by public authority and yet permitted the 
refinements of their rank. Surrounded by guardians, but 
by guardians none of whom as yet insulted them, many of 
whom were secretly their friends, some few their devoted 
servants, traitors to the State in the crisis of a great war but 
traitors through devotion to a national tradition. 

Twenty courses at a meal were not thought too many; 
a dozen servants, paid fantastic salaries, did not suffice 
them; their expenditure, if not the half-million voted, was 
yet at the rate of many thousands a year ; the doctor and the 
drawing master may visit them, and the Duchesse de Gramont 
may send them books. Their wine, though the King alone 
drank it, was of the best, commonly champagne (at that 
time not the fashionable wine of the rich, but rather the 
ritual of feast days) ; they had good furniture at their 
demand, an ample library of many hundred volumes; and 
in general such comfort as such a situation could afford. 
But a violent contrast marked their lives, the contrast 
between this luxury and the anarchy of manners around 
them. Their guards, often gentlemen, were now courteous, 



448 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

now obsequious, now offensive, according as chance sent 
men of varying politics or character by turn to be on duty 
at the Tower. 

The alternate fears and expectations of the Revolution, 
the doubtful chances of the frontier battles, the unsettled 
quarrel of the political parties among the conquerors — all 
these permit the inconsistencies of that moment upon the 
part of the Commune and the Parliament. They permit 
within the Tower that mixture of the prison and the home 
whereby an increasing severity of rule and an increasing 
vexation did not forbid the costly furniture, the very com- 
plete library, the exquisite cooking which make up the curi- 
ous contrast of their lives. 

The order of their day was simple and unchangeable. 
The King would rise at six, shave, dress, and read till nine. 
The Queen and the Dauphin were up by eight, at which 
hour the servants and the guard came into the rooms. At 
nine they breakfasted. During the morning great care was 
taken by Louis himself with the lessons of the boy. The 
Queen and her sister-in-law dressed for the day. They 
walked in the large gardens where the mob from far off 
could watch them from behind the railings of the Square; 
dined at two o'clock, played cards. The King would sleep 
in the afternoon, would sup again at nine, and read till 
midnight. 

A week after the Princesse de Lamballe and the Duchesse 
de Tourzel had left them, before the end of August, the first 
of the indignities offered to the person of the Monarch came 
to him thus: They took away his sword. It was but an 
ornament, yet in all that long line of ancestry no other had 
had his sword unclasped. And this man, who could never 
have used a true sword, let alone that toy, felt the loss like 



THE TEMPLE 449 

a wound. Much at the same time, that is before the end 
of August, entered three new people into the prison — Tison 
and his wife, new gaolers who had to act as spies upon them ; 
and Clery, who was to act as the valet of Louis, who was 
devoted to him, and who has left us what is certainly the 
clearest and probably the most accurate account of theprison 
life of the family. 

In those same days they heard whispered to them by one 
of the guards, Hue, the first news they had had upon the 
matter that never left their thoughts. The invasion was 
successful. Brunswick was well on his way — it was impos- 
sible that he should be opposed. 

For yet another week no incident disturbed the common 
run of their quiet; the physical impressions which build 
up most of life were neighbouring and small; the daily noise 
of hammering in the great tower next door where their per- 
manent apartments were preparing; and the daily reading, 
the daily games of backgammon, and, daily, the sumptuous 
meals; the modest dresses, changed (as is the custom of the 
gentry) for the evening; the daily intercourse with such two 
commissioners from the City Council as happened to be 
on guard. From their windows they could see the rapid 
demolition of the small huddled buildings round the Tower, 
and Palloy's great encircling wall rising between them and 
liberty on every side. 

But beyond these exterior things their minds dwelt con- 
tinually upon the matter which had held all their thoughts 
for a year. They remembered, in their isolation, the fron- 
tier, the Argonne (which is a wall) , and beyond it the bare 
plains of the East: moving densely over these the convoys, 
the guns, and the packed columns of the invasion. They 
had failed to hold their Parisian fortress till the advent of 



450 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

that slow machine, but they could still hope serenely : they 
had known regulars since their childhood: they saw in the 
advance of Brunswick something inevitable; they were 
certain of this success, and they waited. 



How truly the history of the Revolution is the history 
of war can never sufficiently be stamped upon the mind 
of the student. The Terror when it came was, as I 
shall call it, nothing but martial law established during a 
reign: the steps by which the fury of the time advanced 
towards it corresponded exactly to the fortune of the 
French armies. 

Upon the 2nd of September, as the prisoners walked 
in the garden, they heard a roar throughout the city. The 
populace beyond the railings threw stones: they were hur- 
ried back into their prison. For a moment before dusk 
they saw the wild and fanatical face of Mathieu, once a 
monk, who shouted at them: "The Emigres have taken 
Verdun, but if we perish you shall perish with us." In 
the increasing hubbub all around, the little Dauphin 
cried and was disturbed; and all night the Queen 
could not sleep. She could not sleep as the noise rose 
and roared throughout Paris. ... It had almost 
come. The armies were almost here, and once again the 
dice were being shaken for the murder of the prisoners, or 
for their deliverance. 

It was on that day, and pricked by the spur of such news, 
that Marat's frenzied committee gathered a band, and 
began the massacre of those caught in the public prisons — 
all those suspect of complicity with the invasion and of the 
desire to help the foreigner in destroying the new liberties 




THE PRINCES3E DE LAMBALLE 

A rough miniature preserved at the Carnavalet 



THE TEMPLE 451 

of the nation. Among these hundreds, roped in suddenly 
upon suspicion from among the rich or the reactionary of 
the older world, was the foolish, tender and loyal woman 
who had determined to share the fortunes of the Queen — 
the Princesse de Lamballe. When they had taken her a 
fortnight before from the side of her friend she had but been 
thrust into another prison to await these days. 

The 3rd of September broke upon the captives, a dull 
uneasy morning in which the clamour of distant disturbance 
still occasionally reached them from the centre of the city 
southward, then came nearer. 

They were told that on that day there would be no walk 
in the garden. They sat therefore all the morning in their 
rooms. They dined as was their custom; their dinner was 
over, it was not quite three o'clock, and the King and 
the guard for the day stood together at one of the great 
tunnel-like windows of the first floor, for the windows were 
not yet blinded as they later were. The guard by his side 
was one Danjou, a young man of thirty-two, very eager upon 
the new world which he believed to be then arising; full of 
a vision of freedom ; a good sculptor — for that was his 
business — intense in action, he was, above all, brave. 
Energy bubbled out of him, and he had, what goes with 
energy, a clear head and rapid decision. The King and this 
man stood together exchanging that kind of easy conversa- 
tion which Louis had by this time learnt to hold with men 
of every rank. They were watching the workmen pull down 
the houses near by, and the rising of the wall which was built 
to enclose the gardens of the Temple. Now and then, as a 
great beam fell with its great clouds of dust, the honest and 
slow King would laugh and say: "There goes another!" 
Their conversation was on this level when they heard an 



452 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

increasing noise outside the gates. To the Royal Family 
it meant but one more mob rolling by. Danjou, who 
was a free man fresh from outside and knew better, 
was silent and anxious: he was aware that the massacres 
had begun. 

At first it was a set of drunken songs far off, and then a 
clamour in the streets. At last, quite close, separate cries 
and loud demands, and hammering at the gates; and next 
a nasty crowd burst in. They were not very numerous, 
but they were drunk and mad with blood ; and they dragged 
with them the body of the only woman killed during all 
those horrors, a corpse stripped, perhaps mutilated, and 
separate from it a head with powder on the hair. This 
head, thrust upon a pike, some of the foremost raised before 
the window; and Louis, slow of vision though he was, 
recognised it for the Princesse de Lamballe. His wife was 
at the table behind him. The window was high, deep and 
distant. Louis cried suddenly, "Prevent the Queen 
. . . !" But, whether she had seen or had not seen 
that dreadful thing, the Queen had fainted. 

Without, Danjou, acting as promptly as a soldier, was 
standing on the steps, giving the mob all the words that 
came to him of flattery, rhetoric, or menace; and getting 
them at last to scramble down from the heaps of broken 
brick and rubble they occupied, and to go, taking their 
trophy with them. Within, her sister and her husband 
attended the Queen. 

She was quite broken down. The night fell, but again 
she could not sleep. She passed the dark hours sobbing 
with pain, until yet another day had dawned upon her. 
And still a long way off in Paris the massacres continued. 
Still, through the first week of September and the second^ 



THE TEMPLE 453 

advanced the army of the invaders which was to save them 
as it came victorious; or at the worst it came at least to 
destroy their enemies and the city which had dared to 
imprison them. 

News did not reach the prisoners save at such intervals, 
or in such broken whispers, or by such doubtful signs that 
they could make little of it : but whether they knew much of 
that news or little, the army was irresistibly advancing: 
the French troops which were to oppose it were increasingly 
falling in value : the passes of Argonne were forced — all 
but one. Dumouriez was turned; and by the 20th of 
September Prussia and Austria were present, armed, 
four days' march from the gates; and there was no 
force at all between them and Paris. That same day 
the Parliament in Paris met the menace by declaring 
the Republic. 

Upon the morrow the most extreme of the extremists, 
Hebert, the cleanly and insane, looked in to mock them 
coldly; while outside the booming voice of Lubin pro- 
claimed in a most distinct proclamation, phrase by phrase, 
that the French Monarchy was no more. The King went 
on reading, the Queen went on sewing; for such was the 
occupation of either as they heard those words. The slow 
hours of the equinox passed without news or disturbance 
in the city; but meanwhile, out where the armies were, a 
prodigious and as yet unexplained thing had happened. 
Austria and Prussia and the Emigrants had failed. The 
strong cities which they had easily taken, the passes of 
Argonne which they had almost as easily forced, the con- 
temptuous and just strategy by which they had marched 
round the worthless forces of the National Defence and now 
stood between it and Paris — all these by some miracle of 



454 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

war had availed them nothing : and in a muddy dip before 
the windmill of Valmy the whole campaign had failed. 



I wish I had the space here to digress into some account 
of that inexplicable day. I know the place, and I have well 
comprehended the conditions of soil and of gunnery under 
which the Prussian charge failed even before its onset. 
Nor could any study more engross, nor any examination 
prove more conclusive, than an analysis of the few hours in 
which this accident of European history was decided upon 
the ground which, centuries before, had seen Gaul, and there- 
fore Europe, saved from Attila. But neither the limits nor 
the nature of my subject permit me ; and it must be enough 
to say that on the 21st of September at Valmy, a few yards 
from the road whereby the King had fled to Varennes, by 
the failure of one charge the invasion failed. In a few 
days the retreat of the army that was to rescue or to avenge 
the King and the Queen had begun; and from that 
moment the nature of their imprisonment changed. 



Upon the 29th of September pens, ink and paper were 
taken away from the prisoners, and on the evening of the 
same day there once more entered the cleanly and insane 
Hebert, who read to them the order that Louis XVI. should 
be separated from his family and imprisoned in another set 
of rooms in the Tower. 

Those relations which had been at first ridiculous, later 
tolerated, and though affectionate not deep, between the 
Queen and her husband, her dislike of his advances towards 
the Liberal movement, her angry amazement at his patriot-' 



THE TEMPLE 455 

ism in the early days of the revolt — all these which are too 
often read into her last emotions in his regard, must be 
in part forgotten when we consider how they all lived 
together behind those thick walls. Every human soul that 
left the group was something lost to them forever. Of the 
two that had last left them, the head of one, shown mur- 
dered, had been seen at the window. And moreover, this 
order to separate the King meant almost certainly some form 
of approaching disaster. The children also were a bond. 
For they knew nothing of whatever early phantasies, what- 
ever recent disagreements there had been between the wife 
and the husband, and they must now have their father hidden 
from them. 

He was taken away. Upon the next day, the 30th, as 
once before during their imprisonment, the Queen refused 
to eat and sat silent. To that silence there succeeded a fit 
of violent anger in which she screamed at the guards. It 
was when Clery came to get some books for his master. 

It is reported that Simon, one of the Municipals who was 
later to be the gaoler of her child, said as he saw the distress 
of the women, that it nearly moved him to tears, and that 
turning to the Queen he told her that she had had no tears 
when the palace fought the people upon the 10th of August. 
It is said that the Queen answered: "You do not under- 
stand." And when he added: "You should be glad at 
least that the traitors are caught" — by which phrase he 
meant the popular vengeance and the massacres in the 
prisons, the repulsion of the invasion and the rest of it — 
the Queen would not answer a word. 

Upon the 1st of November, the day before her thirty- 
seventh birthday, she saw again a visitor to her prison, a dark 
face which it appalled her to see: it was a face stamped 



456 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

with all the associations of Varennes. It was the face of 
Drouet. 

He spoke to her as a deputy from the Municipality (to 
which he now belonged) , to ask whether she had anything to 
complain of. She resolutely maintained her sullen silence; 
she turned her face away and treated him as though he were 
not there, and he on his part threw his arms up in a gesture 
of resignation, then bowed to her and went out. 

The royal people had colds in November and waited 
through a shivering month what could not but be the 
approach of some very evil thing. Upon the 6th, one of those 
scraps of news — positive news and ill — which reached 
them like patches of clear light in the midst of murky fears 
and rumours, was granted to the prisoners. The Com- 
mittee of Parliament had reported upon Louis' case: an 
indictment was framed; he would certainly be tried. 

To such an advance of misfortune they could only oppose 
the fixed hope that in some way or other the regular armies of 
the Old World must break through. They had been checked 
at Valmy, nay, they had retreated. But surely they could 
not hut return, and brush aside at last the raw and formless 
rags of the French volunteers. They could not hut. The 
old regulated armies, the peace of mind, the brilliant uni- 
forms, the vast prestige of German arms, the leadership of 
gentlemen — sanity, cleanliness, and the approval of 
educated men — these must at last destroy those mere 
composite mobs, half regulars, half levies, half sodden, half 
mutinous, ill-fed, ill-clothed, officered as best might be, 
untutored and untutorable, which their gaolers had flung 
together in a sort of delirium, hotch-potch, to make a con- 
fused covering against the governing classes of Europe who 
were advancing in defence of all the decencies of this world. 



THE TEMPLE 457 

As the Royal Family so hoped against hope, that ill- 
conditioned crowd — old soldiers relaxed in discipline, 
young enthusiasts who drank, sickly and grumbling vol- 
unteers, veterans hoping for revenge against the harsh 
experience of years (a dangerous type), company-oflBcers 
of a week's standing, put side by side with others of twenty 
years, captains in boyhood and lieutenants at forty — 
this welter was jumbled all together under the anxious eye 
of Dumouriez, along a valley of the frontier, on the muddy 
banks of the river called Hate — La Haine. 

I know the place: low banks that rise in the distance into 
hills are overlooked far up stream and down by the fantastic 
belfry of Mons and its huge church dominating the plain. 
Dumouriez, deeply doubting his rabble but knowing the 
temper of his own people, poured the young men and the 
old across the line of the river, leading them with the Mar- 
seillaise. Among the villages of the assaulted line Jemappes 
has given its name to the charge. By the evening of that 
same day, the 6th of November, the Austrian force was 
destroyed, a third of its men lay upon the field or had 
deserted, the rest were beating off in a pressed retreat, 
eastward and away. The rabble should have failed and 
had succeeded. 

I have said that for Valmy no explanation has as yet been 
given. For Jemappes there are many explanations: that 
the Austrians had attempted to hold too long a strategic line 
and were outnumbered at the chief tactical point of the battle : 
that their excellent cavalry (the French in this arm were 
deplorable) had not been allowed to hold their left long 
enough: that one passage of the river was accidental and 
could not have been foreseen (a bad commentary on any 
action!). But the true cause of that temporary yet decisive 



458 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

achievement was to be found in two forms of energy : rapid- 
ity in marching and in the handling of guns — but such 
criticisms do not concern this book/ 

Of this victory, coincident with the beginning of the 
King's agony, Marie Antoinette for days could know noth- 
ing, and even when the rumour reached her it was but the 
victorious shouting in the streets and a name or two whis- 
pered by a servant that gave her a passing impression that 
her champions had suffered a further check — no more. 
Yet before that tide should flow back and finally swamp 
the French packed in Leipsic, twenty years must pass, and 
not till then should the Kings and the lords at last see Paris 
from a hill. 

There is one detail in connection with Jemappes which 
the reader must know because it does so illustrate the myriad 
coincidences of the Queen's life. 

That child whom she had seen and adopted during her 
early childless years, when her fever of youth and exas- 
peration was upon her, that child which for a moment had 
supplied to the girl something of maternity, had now 
grown to manhood. The birth of her own daughter had 
long ago driven out any recollection of the whim : the peas- 
ant boy of St. Michel was forgotten. He had grown into 
his teens full of the bitterness which irresponsible and spas- 
modic patronage can so vigorously breed. During the days 
of October he had been recognised among the wildest of 
those who attacked the palace in Versailles ; he had shouted 
for the Nation ; he had enlisted and was there at Jemappes, 
an obscure volunteer among the thousands whom Du- 
mouriez forced forward upon the frontier. He was present 
upon the 6th of November upon the bank of the Haine 

• These two military qualities are present to-day capitally among the French, and may at any moment 
reappear in the discussions of modern Europe. , 










.'S^y^: 






SANSON'S LETTER 

Asking the authorities what steps he is to take for the execution of the King 



THE TEMPLE 459 

when the mixed battalions charged, singing: a bullet 
struck him and he fell down dead. She, the Queen, was 
there a prisoner in her dimly lit room at night — separated 
from the father of the children who slept near by : her mind 
was big with the new doom of his Indictment and Trial 
which the dull day had brought her. Eighteen years before 
she had caught up that peasant baby in the Louveciennes 
road and kissed it, her eyes full of tears, and in her heart 
a violent yearning half-virginal, half-maternal : he, however, 
lay dead that same night in the Hainault mud with the 
autumn rain upon his body: his name was Jacques Amand. 



With December there was some little respite, for a new 
Municipality had been elected that was a trifle more 
moderate than the old, but in general this life of hers with 
its calm, its dread and its monotony, continued. Now it 
contained some act of humiliation, as when all razors and 
sharp-edged things were taken from the King (upon the 
7th), now some indulgence, as when (upon the 9th) a clavecin 
was allowed the Queen — and it is said that from curiosity 
she played upon this, later, the new notes of the Marseillaise. 

For a few hours the Dauphin was taken from her. It 
was her turn to ask questions of the guards, and theirs to be 
silent; she asked distractedly: they did not reply: but the 
child returned. 

The affair of the trial proceeded rapidly. The briefs 
were gathered, the Kings' counsel met the King day after 
day in the apartment below, and she stayed above there 
alone with her children and was still. She had no com- 
munications with him at all save when at Christmas, after 
he had drafted his will, he wrote to the Convention and 



460 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

caused a short message to be conveyed to the Queen. It was 
perhaps during these days that she wrote upon a fly-leaf 
which is still preserved in St. Germain, ^'Oportet unum mori 
pro populo.^' 

Louis, as the new year broke, saluted it sadly. Within 
a fortnight he had been pronounced guilty at the bar of the 
Parliament before which he was arraigned — guilty, that is, 
of intrigue with the foreigner and of abetting the invasion. 
Upon the 17th of January, 1793, it was known in his prison 
that the penalty would be death. Again did Marie Antoinette 
hear in the room below the step of Malesherbes, her hus- 
band's counsel, coming upon that day to confer with the King, 
but this time he came to speak not of defence but of death. 
A respite was denied to Louis. Upon the 20th his prayer 
for three days in which he might prepare to meet God was 
again refused, and his execution was fixed for the morrow. 
His sentence was read to him in his prison: he heard it 
quietly: and thus upon that 20th of January (a Sunday), 
a murky evening and cold, when it was quite dark the 
princesses heard in the street a newspaper-seller crying the 
news that the King must die; the hollow word ''la mort/' 
very deep and lugubrious, repeated and repeated in the 
chanting tones of that trade, floated up from the winter 
streets. 

It was eight o'clock when they were told that they might go 
down with the children and see the King. 

The family met together and for a little time were silent. 



The spell was on them which we never mention — one 

which the inmost mind refuses — I mean that fear . . . 

During this long isolation of theirs they had become 



PcX^ 






■yu/c^^J > K . - (^ ^V*' <i >t<|^k ' ^'l?W» .*W X i»^ 










7^ 






«^<; 












AUTOGRAPH DEMAND OF LOUIS XVI. FOR A RESPITE OF 
THREE DAYS 



THE TEMPLE 461 

very fixed upon the matter of the Catholic Faith, but that 
fear pervaded them as the Church has said that it must 
always pervade the last hours. This human curse, too 
sacred for rhetoric and too bewildering to occupy a just and 
reasonable prose, I will abandon, content only to have 
written it down — for it was the air and the horror of 
that night. 

For not quite two hours they sat together, not speaking 
much, for all understood, except the little boy: he was sad 
as children are, up to the usual pitch of sadness, for any loss 
great or small which they do not understand: he saw his 
own sister, a child older than he, and all his grown-up elders 
thus crushed, and he also was full of his little sorrow. He 
knew at least that his father was going away. 

The King, seated with his wife on his left and his sister 
at his right hand, drew the boy towards him and made him 
stand between his knees. He recited to him, as it is proper 
to recite to children, words whose simplicity they retain but 
whose full purport they cannot for the moment understand. 
He told the child never to avenge his death, and, since oaths 
are more sacred than repeated words, he took and lifted up 
his small right hand. Then, knowing that the will of the 
sufferer alone can put a due term to such scenes, he rose. 
His wife he pressed to his shoulder. She caught and grasped 
to her body her little children — to hold so much at least firm 
in this world that was breaking from around her. She knew 
that Louis desired them to leave, and she said, after she had 
wildly sworn that she would stay all night and the children 
with her (which he would not have) : 

"Promise that you will see us again .?" 

"I will see you in the morning," he answered, "before 

. . . I go. At eight." 



462 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

"It must be earlier," she said, not yet releasing him. 

"It shall be earlier, by half an hour." 

"Promise me." 

He repeated his promise, and the two women turned to 
the great oaken, nail-studded door; helping the fainting 
girl, and taking the child by the hand they went out to 
the winding stair of stone. It was a little after ten. 

When the iron outer door had shut and he knew the 
women and the children to be above, out of hearing, Louis 
turned to his guards and gave this order, that in spite of what 
he had said, the women should not be told in the morning 
of his departure, for that neither he nor they could suffer it. 

Then he went into the turret chamber where the priest 
was, and said: "Let me address myself to the unique 
affair." 

But above, from the room whose misery could just be 
heard, the Queen, when she had put her boy to bed and kissed 
him bitterly, threw herself upon her own bed all dressed, 
and throughout the darkness of the whole night long her 
daughter could hear her shuddering with cold and anguish. 

That night there was a murmur all around the Tower, 
for very many in Paris were watching, and through the 
drizzling mist there came, hour by hour, the distant rumble 
of cannon, and the sharp cries of command, and men march- 
ing by companies up the narrow Temple lane. 

It was the very January dark, barely six of the morning, 
when a guard from the King's room came up the stair. 
The Queen from above heard him coming. Her candle was 
lit — her fixed gaze expected him. . . . He entered, 
but as he spoke her heart failed her: he had not come for 
the summons, he had but come for the King's book 
of prayers. She waited the full hour until seven struck in 






irjowui^ tlM-A ^/nutiU-. i^^eMiMr a^uxAt 4^^ 

REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONERS 

That all is duly arranged for the burial of Louis Capet 



after his execution 



THE TEMPLE 463 

the steeples of the town, and the pale light began to grow: 
she waited past the moment of her husband's promise, till 
eight, till the full day — but no one came. Still she sat on, 
not knowing what might not have come between to delay 
their meeting : doors opening below, steps coming and going 
on the stairs, held all her mind. But no one sent for her, no 
one called her. It was nine when a more general movement 
made her half hope, half fear. The sound of that movement, 
which was the movement of many men, passed downward 
to the first stories, to the ground, and was lost. An emp- 
tiness fell upon the Tower. Then she knew that her hope 
had departed. 

For a moment there were voices in the courtyard, the 
tramp of many men upon the damp gravel, the creaking of 
the door, more distant steps in the garden, and the wheels 
of the coach far away at the outer porch. Then the confused 
noise of a following crowd dwindling westward till nothing 
remained but a complete silence in those populous streets, 
now deserted upon so great a public occasion. 

For yet another hour the silence endured unbroken : ten 
o'clock struck amid that silence, and the quarter. . . . 
The Queen heard through the shuttered window the cu- 
rious and dreadful sound of a crowd that roars far off, and 
she knew that the thing had been done. 

Life returned into the streets beneath, the loud shrill call 
of the news-men, crying the news accursedly, came much 
too shrill and too distinct against the walls. All day long, on 
to the early closing of the darkness, the mists gathered and 
lay thick over Paris and around her high abandoned place. 



XVIII 
THE HOSTAGE 

FROM THE 21sT OF JANUARY, 1793, TO THREE IN THE MORNING OF 
THE 2nd of august, 1793 

THAT night the prisoners in the Tower did not sleep, 
saving the little Dauphin: he slept soundly; and it 
is said of his mother, that, watching him, she mur- 
mured that he was of the age at which his brother had died, 
at Meudon, and that those of her family who died earliest 
were the most blessed. In the last silences of the January 
night, till past two in the morning, the woman Tison, who 
was in part their gaoleress and in part a spy upon them, 
heard them talking still, and when she came to them Madame 
Elizabeth said: "For God's sake leave us." 

Clery, the dead master's valet, was taken away, still noting 
as he went the new look in the Queen's eyes. And in this 
same week there came the mourning clothes which they had 
asked of the authorities and which had been granted them. 
The Princess Royal fell ill. The Queen would no longer walk 
in the garden now, and the child, lacking exercise — and 
with bad blood — suffered. Her legs swelled badly. The 
authorities allowed the man who had been the family doctor 
of the children in the old days to come and visit them now. 
Brunier w^as his name, and in the old days Marie Antoinette 
had affected to ridicule his middle-class energy : she thought 
he lacked respect to the clay of which she and her children 
were made. She was glad enough to see him now, and he 

464 



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FIRST PAGE OF LOUIS XVI.'S WILL 



THE HOSTAGE 465 

was devoted. He was allowed to call in a surgeon and to 
bring in linen. Nor was he their only communication with 
the external world, for though the sound and the news of it 
did not reach them, yet they were not, as modern prisoners 
are, denied companionship. Upon the pretext or with the 
real excuse that the mourning clothes did not fit, a dress- 
maker whom they had known was allowed in; and in general, 
as will be seen in a moment, there were methods of com- 
munication between them and those who desired to know 
every moment of their captivity and every accident of their 
fate. From the close of January onward into the summer, 
five months, it is possible to establish no precise chronology 
of their actions, but it is possible to decide the general tenor 
of their lives : save in one particular, which is that we can- 
not determine to-day what exactly were the relations 
between the Queen and those who would rescue her or 
who could give her news of the outer world — especially 
Fersen. 

We have of course several accounts furnished by eye- 
witnesses, notably the account of Turgy, who was their sole 
servant in their prison ; but these accounts, and that account 
especially, are tinged with the quite obvious atmosphere of 
the Restoration. Quite poor people, writing at the sug- 
gestion of a powerful government at a time when every 
laudatory or illuminating detail upon the imprisonment of 
the royal family had its high money value, must, however 
honest, be somewhat suspect. For the most honest man or 
woman the conditions of the Restoration were such that 
there would be an inevitable tendency to exaggeration ; and 
we have no evidence available of the exact characters of 
the witnesses. Still the witnesses are witnesses, and though 
an elaborate code of signals (which some of them pretend) 



466 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

probably did not exist, yet we know both from Fersen him- 
self and from the way in which affairs were conducted on 
either side, that not a little communication was established 
between the widowed Queen and the Royalists outside. To 
more than that general statement no historian can commit 
himself, unless he be one of those belated university types 
who will trust a printed or a written document beyond their 
common sense. 

It must be remembered that during the first two months 
after the death of the King, that is, during all February and 
March, 1793, the exalted and the noble minds of the Gironde 
were still at the head of that executive power which is in 
France (since the French have no aristocracy) the whole of 
government. Nay, they remained technically the heads of 
the Executive until the end of May, 1793, though their 
power was touched by the establishment of the Revolution- 
ary Tribunal on the proposal of the Radicals in March, and 
undermined by the establishment of the Committee of Public 
Safety on the proposal of Danton in early April. 

The Girondins and the Municipality of Paris were at 
odds. The Municipality itself was not homogeneous. 

The guarding of the Queen, which was the business 
of the Municipality, was not uniform. The Municipality 
had to choose many men to relieve each other in relays ; and 
of these, two, Toulan and Lepitre, tended, at least after a 
little experience of their prisoners, to show them sympathy. 
One of their officers, Michonis, did more, and would have 
saved her. 

From time to time a newspaper would be smuggled in to 
these princesses ; it is said that music played from a window 
whence they could hear it, conveyed signals, and at any rate 
it is certain that Fersen had some news of them. 



THE HOSTAGE 467 

Now Fersen at this moment, in early February that is, 
bad as his judgment of French affairs was, appreciated their 
situation in a phrase. He called the Queen *'a hostage,'* 
and this describes very accurately the meaning of her 
captivity. 

I repeat, no one can understand the Revolution who does 
not treat it as a military thing, and no one can understand 
military affairs who imagines them to be an anarchy. Of 
necessity a brain directs them, for if in military affairs a 
plan be lacking, the weakest opposing plan can always 
conquer. It was not cruelty nor love of vengeance that 
dominated the position of the prisoners. They were an 
asset. 

But though their value was recognised and their imprison- 
ment was part of a diplomatic arrangement, yet there were 
different policies regarded them. The Radicals, the 
Mountain, were at once the most enthusiastic and the most 
practical of the Revolutionary groups. They were not in 
power, they had not a permanent majority in the Parliament 
though they had Paris behind them; but they saw clearly 
that France was in to win: they saw clearly (first Danton, 
then ill succession to him Camot) that every general action 
lost, every fortress in a chain surrendered, was the approach 
not of some neutral or balancing arrangement, but of a full, 
complete and ruthless reaction in Europe without and in 
France within. It had come to winning all or losing all. 
The nobler Girondin blood that still controlled the Republic, 
knew too little of the vices of men to follow that calculation. 
The Girondins still believed that in some mystic way the 
steady adherence to the Republican ideal — the volunteer 
soldier as against the conscript, the citizen controlling the 
soldier, the locality governing itself — man absolute — was 



468 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

a thing so high that no human circumstance could wound it. 
They thought it bound to survive through some force 
inherent in justice. 1 

Within three weeks of the execution of Louis all Europe 
was banded against the Republic, and one may say, morally, 
all the Christian world, for even the distant and ill-informed 
Colonials of Philadelphia and Virginia had recoiled ner- 
vously at the news of a king's execution. The pressure of 
that general war against the Republic was to give, by what 
fools call the logic of events, a most powerful aid to the 
practical and savage determination of the Mountain : it was 
to squeeze to death the idealism of the Girondins. |i 

While yet these last were in power there were plots for 
the escape of the prisoners, plots which failed; and their 
treatment, even in minor details (as the allowing them to 
take their own form of exercise and the leaving of them as 
much as possible alone) was easy. Little objects left by 
the King were conveyed to the Queen from the upper room, 
and Jar j ayes, a friend, saw that they reached the King's 
brothers. Had the impossible attempt of the Girondins 
performed the miracle which they who had called on this 
miraculous war demanded, had the patchy volunteer forces 
of the French found it possible to conquer in those early 
months of '93, the treatment of the prisoners would have 
gone from better to better; their release by negotiation 
would soon have arrived, if not by negotiation then from 
mere mercy. This same Jarjayes, who had been Marshal 
of the camp and was husband to one of the Queen's 
women, found things so easy that he could weave a definite 
plot for the escape of the royal prisoners. "^Vhy it failed we 
do not know, though of course the Royalist evidence we 
have ascribes it to a special virtue in the Queen, who refused 



THE HOSTAGE 469 

to be separated from her children. In the first week of 
March the first plan failed, on account of a violent reaction 
towards severity on the part of the authorities following 
the first military reverses in the Netherlands. The 
second is better attested, and there is here a sufiicient con- 
currence of witnesses to believe that some hesitation of the 
Queen's did cause its final failure. She would have had to 
flee alone, and it is on the whole just to decide that she 
refused; for we have it on the authority of a fairly honest 
man that the Princess Royal had some memory of this 
incident of her childhood and had spoken to him on it, 
while Chauveau-Lagarde (who was later the Queen's coun- 
sel during her trial) has left a copy of a note of hers saying 
that she would not fly alone without her children. Of other 
supposed communications between her and Jar j ayes we have 
only his copy of her writing.' At any rate, with the last 
days of March all this early phase of the Queen's widowed 
captivity comes to an end. Dumouriez and the French 
armies lost the great and decisive action of Neerwinden 
upon the 18th of the month, and in the last week of it, 
though the Committee of Public Safety was not yet formed 
to establish martial law throughout the Republic and to 
save the State, yet new rigours began. 

The woman Tison and her husband — half the gaolers, 
half the spies of the family, as I have said — were not 
permitted to leave the Tower of the Temple. Pencils were 
forbidden. Upon the 25th of March a chimney fire was 

' I can but pay little attention to evidence of that kind. In the case of Fersen there are reasons for his 
destroying the originals : he was the recipient of her passionate affections. Moreover, we know his nature well: 
he had all the Northern simplicity, and with that intense passion of his, he would have thought it sacrilege to 
ascribe a single word to her that she had not written, or to make fiction out of her beloved soul. Moreover, 
he cared little whether posterity knew or did not know the things he chose to bequeath to his heirs. In the 
case of inferior men with an obvious axe to grind, and proud, whatever their loyalty, to be intermediaries 
between the Hostage and her rescuers, the evidence of mere copies which they alone can certify is of very 
little value. 



470 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

a pretext for the appearance of Chaumett coming from the 
Commune of Paris. He returned the next day with the 
Mayor Pache, and with Santerre, the man of the fall of the 
Bastille, the rich leader of the popular mihtia ; in those same 
hours Dumouriez at the head of the defeated French Army 
was receiving the general of the Austrian forces and nego- 
tiating treason. He was about to join hands with the 
enemy and to propose a march on Paris. The first demand 
for the Queen's trial was made — by Robespierre : a week 
and Dumouriez' treason was accomplished: the chief 
general of the Republic had despaired of France and had 
gone over to the Austrian camp with the design of marching 
on Paris, and at least restoring order; his army had refused 
to follow him, but the shock was enormous. Paris won; 
the Girondins lost. The Committee of Public Safety was 
established. The Terror was born; and the Revolution, 
acting under martial law, w^ent forward to loose everything 
at once or to survive by despotism and by arms. 



Thence onward Marie Antoinette's imprisonment becomes 
another matter. On the 20th of April there came into her 
prison men whose tone and manner would never have been 
allowed before: the chief of the " Madmen," as the populace 
called them, the intense Republicans who would believe any- 
thing of a Bourbon, Hebert, came into the prison. He came 
at night. By coincidence or by design her terrors for the 
future were to be terrors of the night. It was near eleven 
when his dandy, meagre figure and thin, pointed face 
appeared to terrify her, and for five hours the whole place 
was searched and ransacked. Her little son, already ailing, 
she had to lift from his bed while they felt the mattress and 



THE HOSTAGE 471 

the very walls to see what might be hidden. They took 
from Madame Elizabeth her stick of sealing-wax, her pencil 

— which had no lead to it — and they took with them a 
little scapular of the Sacred Heart and a prayer for France 

— but the France for which the princesses had this written 
prayer was not the nation. 

On the 23rd they came again and found nothing 
but an old hat of the King's, which his sister kept as a sort 
of relic and had put under her bed. It was taken for 
granted (and justly) that communication had been estab- 
lished between the prisoners and the kings outside. A 
denunciation of Lepitre, Toulan and the rest, failed, but 
Toulan and Lepitre were struck off the list of guards. 

With the end of May the populace, supported and per- 
mitted by the new Committee of Public Safety, conquered 
the Moderate majority, and the Committee of Public 
Safety was left without rivals; it began from that 
moment to direct the war with the leonine courage and 
ferocity, the new and transcendent intelligence, the ruth- 
less French lucidity which ultimately at Wattignies saved 
the State. 

Upon the victory of Paris and the Mountain the destruct- 
ion of the Moderates, the establishment of martial law, the 
despotism of the Committee of Public Safety, came the last 
phase of the Queen's imprisonment — and with it, by a 
most evil coincidence or portent, the growing illness of the 
little heir, her son. Sharp pains in his side, convulsions, the 
doctor sent for in the early part of May, and again toward 
its end, and again in June, things going from bad to worse 
with him. 

To these prisoners, shut away from men, the movement 
of that world was unknown. They only knew that some- 



472 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

thing was surging all round the thick, obliterating, impene- 
trable walls of their tower/ On the day when the populace 
conquered the Girondins, all they knew was that they were 
not allowed even upon the roor, from which, upon most days 
for some hour or so, they might take the air and look down 
upon the slates of revolutionary Paris far below, and dur- 
ing June when the new power of the Committee and of 
martial law, of the Terror, of the determination of the Rev- 
olution, of the city, was fixing itself firmly in the saddle, 
they knew nothing of what was passing, save perhaps from 
a growing insolence in their guards. 

In that same month yet another plot for their escape 
failed. It depended upon two men; the one a certain Batz, 
on whom our information is most confused and our evidence 
most doubtful, as indeed his own character and his own 
memories were doubtful and confused (he was a sort of 
enthusiast who had already attempted many impossible 
things) ; the other, a character quite clearly comprehended, 
one Michonis. Batz was a kind of baron; Michonis was, 
like Toulan and Lepitre, of the Municipality and had regu- 
lar authority. He will be seen again in the last plot to 
save the Queen. Of whatever nature was this uncertain 
attempt, it also failed. Shortly after the woman Tison 
diversified their lives by going mad with great suddenness 
and suffering a fit. She was removed, and the incident 
is only of note because certain pamphleteers have called 
it a judgment of God. Yet her wage was small. 

Upon the day after that unusual accident, the growing 
suspicion of the popular party against what was left of 
Moderate administration in Government broke out in a 
furious denunciation of actual and supposed conspiracies. 

^ The ws^lls. to be accurate, were nine feet thick, and the windows were like tunnels, 



THE HOSTAGE 473 

It was feared that the great mass of suspects now gathered 
into the prisons possessed some engine for revolt. An 
extreme policy in diplomacy and in arms, as in internal 
government, finally prevailed, and with the 1st of July 
this ardent severity took the form of a decree, passed in the 
now enfeebled and captured Parliament, that the Dauphin 
— the greatest asset of all — should be separated from his 
mother and put, though in the same building, under a 
different guard. 



It is not to be imagined that so large a transformation 
of policy between the execution of the King and the decree 
for the separation of the Dauphin had, in any part of it, a 
mainspring other than the war. I have said that the steps 
of the spring, the destruction of the Gironde by the 
Mountain, the capture by Paris of the Parliament were 
but the effects of the collapse of the volunteer rush at 
Neerwinden, the treason of Dumouriez and the new — 
and necessary — martial law that henceforward bound 
the Republic. All the last rigours of the imprisonment 
depended upon the same catastrophe. 

The enemy that had been checked at Valmy, had been 
attacked in the winter but half -prepared, the enemy that 
had suffered the French gallop to overwhelm the Nether- 
lands and to occupy Mayence — was returning. The 
Republicans were out of Belgium, the armies of the Kings 
were flooding back upon the Rhine. The Rhine and Alsace 
depended upon two things, Mayence and, behind it, shield- 
ing Alsace, the lines of Weissembourg that stretched from 
the river to the Mountains. Mayence was to fall, the lines 
of Weissembourg were to be pierced. As for the Belgic 



474 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

frontier, there a line of fortresses could check for a moment 
the advance of the Allies — for the French fortify : they are 
in this the heirs of Rome; and whenever they suffer defeat 
the theory of fortification is belittled; in their resurrection 
of military power the spade goes forward, borne upon the 
shoulders of Gaul. 

In this July of 1793 the Belgic frontier only perillously 
held. The sieges were at hand and the fall of the frontier 
strongholds was at hand. These once conquered, it was 
proposed by Austria, Prussia and England to dismember 
the territory of the Republic. To all this I will return. 

It was upon the 1st of July, with the enemy advanc- 
ing, that it was proposed to take the Dauphin from 
the Queen. 

Upon the evening of the 3rd the order was executed. 

It was but just dark when the guard challenged a patrol 
at the gate of the Tower; the patrol was the escort of 
six Municipals who had come from the authorities of the 
city to take the person of the child. 

The women within the prison had had no warning. 
The same fate which had been kind to them in making 
a silence all around their lives during these dreadful months 
and in hiding from them the dangers that rose around was 
cruel to them now, leaving them unprepared for this sud- 
den and tearing wound. There was a candle in the room 
and by its light the little girl, the Princess Royal, read out 
aloud — from a book of Prayers it is said — to her aunt 
and her mother, the Queen. These two women sewed as 
they listened ; they were mending the clothes of the children. 
The little boy slept in his bed in the same room : his mother 
had hung a shawl to hide the light from his eyes. Save for 









./'•'^^•^/-^^.O; <A«- ?-^^._^__ 












<r2^ 



^(jUU^^^ 




ORDER OF THE COMMITTEE OF PUBLIC SAFETY 

In Cambon's handwriting, directing the Dauphin to be separated from his mother 



THE HOSTAGE 475 

his regular breathing there was no sound to interrupt the 
high monotonous voice of the Uttle girl as she read on, when 
suddenly her elders heard upon the floors below the advent 
of new authorities and of a message. The steps of six men 
came louder up the stone stairs, the doors opened as though 
to a military command, and the princesses saw, crowding 
in the corner of the small room, a group whose presence they 
did not understand, though among them the Queen recog- 
nised Michonis. The reading stopped, the women turned 
round but did not rise, the child stirred in his sleep. One 
of that group spoke first before the Queen could question 
them. "We have come," he said, "by order of the House, 
to tell you that the separation of Capet's son from his mother 
has been voted." 

Then the Queen rose. Never until now had she aban- 
doned before any but her husband, or perhaps in the very 
intimacy of the Council, the restraint which she believed 
her rank to demand. The violence of her blood had been 
apparent in many a petulant and many an undignified 
gesture; she had raised her voice against many a Deputa- 
tion ; she had sneered more than once against women of a 
poorer kind ; she had thrown at La Fayette the keys which 
he demanded on their return to the palace after the flight 
to Varennes. But she had never yet lost command of 
herself. Upon this terrible night for the only time in 
her life she did completely lose all her self-command. 
Something confused her like a madness and all the 
intensity of her spirit came out nakedly in defence of 
the child. 

She stood up by the little bed ; all her complexity of pride 
and all her training in intrigue deserted her; she cried out; 
she took refuge in such weapons as the women of the poor. 



476 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

whom no law protects, use to defend their sanctities. Her 
voice rang, became shrill and shrieked in the little room, 
violent and rising; she threatened death; next moment 
she implored. Her little daughter and her sister-in-law 
caught her methods. They joined in the imprecations and 
in the prayers. The child was awakened by the noise, by 
the shuffling of so many awkward and heavy feet in the door- 
way, by the passionate outcries around him; he awoke 
and gazed; then when he saw his mother he clung to her, 
and she kissed him repeatedly and held him as though he 
were again part of herself and as though none could take 
him from her without taking her life also, and all the while 
her prayers and execrations showered upon the armed men 
as they stood hesitating apart and waiting. 

How long this scene continued we cannot tell. It may 
have been the best part of an hour.* At last some one of 
the deputation found decision and cried, *'Why will 
you make this scene ? No one wants to kill your son ! 
Let him go freely; we could take him — if you force 
us to that!" 

She lifted the little boy up and dressed him, his eyes still 
dazed with sleep. She lingered over him with conventional 
benedictions, repeated and prolonged. Her hands could 
not let him go. Fearing some further violence, a member 
of the deputation muttered a suggestion for the Guard, 
but the Queen's active passion was exhausted, she would 
be violent no more. She herself, perhaps, loosened his little 
hands from her dress and said, "Come, you must obey. 
. . . " Then they took him away; the great door was 
shut upon him; the women within, trembling beside the 
cot, cou ld still hear the child pleading with a lessening voice 

1 The Duchesse d'Angouleme, the little girl then present, said, years after, that it lasted a full hour, but 
such memories are untrustworthy. 



THE HOSTAGE 477 

in the distance until another door clanged below and the 
rest of the night was silent. 



God has made a law whereby women are moved by 
strength and by weakness, but in different ways: by strength 
as a necessity for their protection, so that they demand it 
in men and in things and yet perpetually rebel against it; 
and by weakness as an opportunity for the exercise of all 
their nature, so that suffering (if it is sudden) or disaster 
calls out in women all of themselves: and this is especially 
true of mothers and sons. 

That child, that boy, had seemed at first so rosy and 
so well in the old days at Versailles; his health had so con- 
trasted with the sickly advance of Death upon his elder 
brother. He had been the hope of the Throne. Then 
there had come upon him the curse of the men of his family, 
he had grown weaker and more weak, he had had nervous 
fits of rage, a nervous fear of noise unnatural to his age. 
Some had thought him deficient ; all had noted with anxiety 
or with malice his increasing weakness during the period 
of the Royal Family's imprisonment. Fits had seized 
him. But a few weeks before he had had convulsions; and 
all June during the relief of which I have spoken, fears 
for him had already arisen : it was a rapid tragedy of child- 
hood that was soon to end in death.' His mother's devo- 
tion — having him now only for its object in the isolation 
of those stone walls — had become the whole of her being. 
That he had grown so dull, so failing, so more than com- 
mon sickly, so odd, did but heighten in some way the 

• I take for granted the death of Louis XVII. in prison: it is certified, it is clear, and even were it not so, the 
progress of his disease compels such a conclusion: but this book is not the place for a discussion upon the 
question, nor could so considerable a debate be discussed even in an Appendix. 



478 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

mystic feeling in her. He was the King. . . . She 
was observed to pay him a certain reverence, and she 
served him at table (as spies thought at least) with the 
gravity of a ceremonial. All this at one abominable stroke 
she lost. 

She would watch him — oh, unhappy woman! — through 
chinks and chance places when the little chap was taken 
out to get the air, with gaolers, upon the roof for some few 
minutes of the day. He, of course, easily and at once forgot. 
He soon learnt to repeat the phrases he heard around 
him, laughed when his guardians laughed, and even asked, 
as he heard them ask, "whether the women still lived.?'* 
He played at ball a little with his gaolers; but he weakened 
still and he decayed. That child was the head of an auth- 
ority older than Islam, and the heir to a family name older 
than the Sagas, and in his little drooping body were all the 
rights of the Capetians. 

The Queen saw him, I say, for a few moments — now 
upon one day now upon another — by chance, as he took 
the air with his gaolers. She had nothing more to lose — 
and her soul was broken. 



; Those who were to destroy the new society of the French, 
to rescue or to avenge the Queen, were now once more at 
hand and now almost arrived. 

Their way to Paris lay open but for two last perilous and 
endangered defences; to the right the lines of Weissembourg, 
to the left Maubeuge. 

There are two avenues of approach westward into the 
heart of Gaul and two only. The great marches of the 
French eastward, which are the recurrent flood-tides of 



THE HOSTAGE 479 

European history, pour up by every channel, cross the Alps 
at every pass, utilise the narrow gate of Belfort, the narrower 
gate of the Rhone, the gorge of the Meuse, the Cerdagne, the 
Samport, Roncesvalles. But in the ebb, when the outer 
peoples of Europe attempt invasion, two large ways alone 
satisfy that necessity at once for concentration and for a 
wide front which is essential to any attack upon a people 
permanently warlike. ' These two ways pass, the one 
between the Vosges and the Ardennes, the other between 
the Ardennes and the sea. By the first of these have come 
hosts from Attila's to those of 1870; by the second, hosts from 
the little war band of Clovis to the Allies of 1815. Both ave- 
nues were involved in this balancing moment of '93 : the first, 
the passage by Lorraine was still blocked by the defence of 
Mayence and the lines of Weissembourg," the second, 
the passage by the Low Countries was all but won. Of 
the string of fortresses defending that passage Maubeuge was 
now almost the last, would soon be the very last to stand. 

It was not upon Mayence and the lines of Weissembourg 
(though these to soldiers seemed of equal importance), 
it was upon the bare plains of the north that Paris strained 
its eyes in these perilous hot days — the long flat frontier 
of Hainault and of Flanders — and it is here that the reader 
must look for his background to the last agony of the 
Queen. 

The line of defence, stretched like a chain across 
that long flat frontier, was breaking down, had almost 
disappeared. Point after point upon the line had gone; it 
held now by one point remaining, and the ruin of that was 

' These words " concentration " and " a wide front " may seem self-contradictory. I mean by concentration 
a massed invasion, if you are to succeed against a military people ; and by " a wide front " the necessity for 
attacking such a people in several places at once, if you are to succeed. For a force marching by a single 
narrow gate (such as is the valley of the Meuse) is in peril of destruction if its opponents are used to war. 

* The lines of Weissembourg did not, of course, physically block the entry; they lay on the flank of it: but 
until the army behind them could be dislodged it made impossible an advance by that way into Lorraine. 



480 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

imminent: the Republicans were attentive, in a fever for the 
final crash, when the last pin-point upon which the defence 
was stretched should give way and the weight of the invaders 
should pour unresisted upon Paris. When that march 
began there would be nothing for those who had challenged 
the world but "to cover their faces and to die.'* 

Of what character is that northeastern frontier of France 
and what in military terms was the nature of the blow 
which was about to fall ? 

It is a frontier drawn irregularly due southeast for a 
hundred miles, from the sea to the difficult highlands of 
Ardennes and the waste Fagne Land. As it runs thus 
irregularly, it cuts arbitrarily through a belt of population 
which is one in creed, speech, and tradition: there is there- 
fore no moral obstacle present to the crossing of it, and to 
this moral facility of passage is added the material facility 
that no evident gates or narrows constrain an invading army 
to particular entries. From the dead flat of the sea-coast 
the country rises slowly into little easy hills and slopes of 
some confusion, but not till that frontier reaches and abuts 
against the Ardennes does any obstacle mark it. It is 
traversed by a score of main roads suitable for a parallel 
advance, all excellent in surface and in bridges and other 
artifice; it is thickly set with towns and villages to afford 
repose and supply. Lastly, it is the nearest point of attack 
to Paris. Once forced, a week's rapid marching from that 
frontier brings the invader to the capital, and there is nothing 
between. 

Such advantages — which, it is said, tempt unstable 
brains in Berlin to-day — have rendered this line, whenever 
some powerful enemy held its further side, of supreme 
defensive importance to the French. Until the formation 



THE HOSTAGE 481 

of the Belgian State it had been for centuries — from the 
battle of Bouvines at least — the front of national defence ; 
here the tradition of the seventeenth century and the genius 
of Vauban and his successors had established a network 
of strongholds, which formed the barrier now so nearly 
destroyed in this summer of '93. 

These fortresses ran along that frontier closely inter- 
dependent, every one a support to its neighbours, forming 
a narrowing wedge of strongholds, from where Dunkirk 
upon the sea was supported by Gravelines to where the 
whole system came to a point in the last fortress and camp 
of Maubeuge, close up against the impassable Ardennes. 

Maubeuge was the pivot of that door. Upon Maubeuge 
the last effort of the invaders would be made. The rolling 
up of the defending line of strongholds would proceed until 
Maubeuge alone should be left to menace the advance 
of the invasion. Maubeuge once fallen, all the Revolution 
also fell. 

So much has been written to explain the failure of the 
Allies and the ultimate triumph of France in that struggle, 
that this prime truth — the all-importance of Maubeuge — 
clear enough to the people of the time, has grown obscured.* 
The long debates of the Allies, the policy of the Cabinet 
in London, the diversion upon Dunkirk, all these and 
many other matters are given a weight far beyond their 
due in the military problem of '93. The road from the 
base of the Allies to their objective in Paris lay right through 
the quadrilateral of fortresses, Mons, Conde, Valenciennes, 
Maubeuge. Mons was theirs; Conde, Valenciennes and 



* The great authority of Jomini laid the foundation of this misconception, one which the reader might (per- 
haps erroneously) find implied in Mr. Fortescue's admirable account of this campaign ; but the truth is that 
it is impossible to accumulate detail — as a military historian is bound to do — especially where long cordons arc 
opposed to each other, without losing sight of the vital points of the line, 



482 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

Maubeuge blocked their advance at its outset. A deflection 
to the left was rendered impossible by the Ardennes. A 
deflection to the right, possible enough, added, for every 
degree of such deflection, an added peril to the communica- 
tion of the advance, laying the flank of the communications 
open to attack from whatever French garrison might have 
been left uncaptured. All these garrisons must be accounted 
for before Coburg could march on Paris. Mons, as I have 
said, was in Austrian hands and in Austrian territory; Conde, 
nay, Valenciennes, might fall successively to the invader; but 
so long as Maubeuge remained untaken the march upon 
Paris was blocked. 

There were not wanting at that moment critics who 
demanded an immediate march on the capital, especially 
as the summer waxed, as the peril of the Queen increased, 
and as the immobility of the allies gave time for the martial 
law of the Terror to do its work, and to raise its swarms of 
recruits from all the countrysides: these critics were in 
error; Coburg at the head of the Austrian army was right. 
Poor as was the quality of the French troops opposed to 
him, and anarchic as was their constantly changing command, 
to have left a place of refuge whither they could concentrate 
and whence they could operate in a body upon his lengthen- 
ing communications, as he pressed on to Paris through hostile 
country, would have been mad cavalry work, not general- 
ship. Maubeuge with its entrenched camp, Maubeuge 
open to continual reinforcement from all the French 
country that lay south and west of it, was essential to his 
final advance. That Maubeuge stood untaken transformed 
the war, and, in spite of every disturbing factor in the 
complex problem, it should be a fixed datum in history that 
the resistance of Maubeuge and the consequent charge at 



THE HOSTAGE 483 

Wattignies decided '93 as surely as the German artillery at 
St. Privat decided 1870. Maubeuge was the hinge of all 
the campaign. 

Coburg, as the summer heightened, set out to pocket one 
by one the supports of that last position; he easily succeeded. 

In Paris a vague sense of doom filled all the leaders, but a 
fever of violent struggle as well. . . . The Queen in her 
prison saw once again (and shuddered at it) the dark face 
of Drouet and heard his threatening voice. 

All France had risen. There was civil war in the west 
and in the north. A Norman woman had murdered Marat. 
Mayence was strictly held all round about with the 
Marseillese raging within; and as for the Barrier of 
Fortresses to the north, Coburg now held them in the 
hollow^ of his hand. 



A fortnight after the Dauphin had been taken from the 
Queen, the fortress of Conde fell; it had fallen from lack 
of food. The Council of Maubeuge heard that news. 
Valenciennes would come next along the line — then, 
they! They wTote to the Committee of Public Safety a 
letter, which may still be read in the archives of the town, 
demanding provisions. None came. 

It is difficult to conceive the welter of the time: dis- 
tracted orders flying here and there along the hundred 
miles of cordon that stretched from Ardennes to the channel : 
orders contradictory, unobeyed, or, if obeyed, fatal. Com- 
mands shifted and reshifted; civilians from the Parlia- 
ment carrying the power of life and death and muddling 
half they did; levies caught up at random, bewildered, 



484 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

surrendering, deserting ; recruits too numerous for the army to 
digest, a lack of all things. No provisions entered Maubeuge. 

July dragged on, and Maubeuge could hear down the 
west wind the ceaseless booming of the guns round Valen- 
ciennes. Upon July 26th, Dubay, the Representative on 
mission for the Parliament, sent to and established in 
Maubeuge, heard an unusual silence. As the day drew on 
a dread rose in him. The guns round Valenciennes no 
longer boomed. Only rare shots from this point and from 
that were heard: perhaps it was the weather deceived him. 
But all next day the same damnable silence hung over the 
west. On the 30th he wrote to the Parliament, "We 
hear no firing from Valenciennes — but we are sure they 
cannot have surrendered." They had surrendered. 

So Valenciennes was gone! . . . Conde was gone. 
. . . Maubeuge alone remained, with the little out- 
post of Le Quesnoy to delay a moment its necessary invest- 
ment and sure doom. 

The officer in command of Maubeuge awaited his orders. 
They came from Paris in two days. Their rhetoric was of 
a different kind from that in which Ministers who are 
gentlemen of breeding address the General Officers of their 
own society to-day. The Committee of Public Safety had 
written thus: "Valenciennes has fallen: you answer on 
your head for Maubeuge.'* 

Far off in Germany, where that other second avenue 
of invasion was in dispute, the French in Mayence had 
surrendered. 



So July ended, and immediately upon the 1st of August 
the defiant decree was thrown at Europe that the Queen 



THE HOSTAGE 485 

herself should be tried. So closely did that decision mix 
with the military moment that it was almost a military 
thing and at half-past two on the morning of the 2nd, 
the order reached her: she in turn was to go down the way 
so many had begun to tread. 

She showed no movement of the body or of the mind. 
Night had already brought her too many terrors. The 
two women were awakened. The decree of the Con- 
vention which ordered the transference of the Queen to the 
Conciergerie for her trial was read. She answered not a 
word, but dressed herself and made a little package of her 
clothes ; she embraced her daughter gently, and bade her 
regard Madame Elizabeth as her second mother; then stood 
for a moment or two in the arms of that sister-in-law who 
answered her in whispers. She turned to go and did not 
look backward, but as she went out to get into the carriage 
which was to carry her across the City, she struck her 
head violently against the low lintel of the door. They 
asked her if she was hurt, and she answered in the first and 
only words that she addressed to her captors that nothing 
more on earth could give her pain. The carriage travelled 
rapidly through the deserted streets of the night, the clatter- 
ing of the mounted guard on either side of it. It was her 
one brief glimpse of the world between a prison and a 
prison. 

As the Queen drove through the night, silent as it was, 
there reached her those noises of a city which never cease, 
and which to prisoners in transition (to our gagged victims 
to-day as they cross London from one Hell to another) 
are a sort of gaiety or at least a whiff of other men's living. 
These noises were the more alive and the more perpetual 
in this horrid August dark of '93 because a last agony was 



486 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

now risen high upon the Revolution; then news had been 
of defeats, of cities fallen, of Valenciennes itself surrendered: 
so that the next news might be the last. All night long men 
sat up in the wine-shops quarrelling on it; even as her gaolers 
drove her by, she saw lights in dirty ground-floor windows 
and she heard from time to time snatches of marching 
songs. It was the invasion. 



XIX 

THE HUNGER OF MAUBEUGE 

FROM THE MORNING OF AUGUST 2, 1793, TO MIDNIGHT OF 
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 13, 1793 

THE Queen descended from her carriage. She was 
weak, but erect. The close heat of the night and 
her sleeplessness and her fatigue had caused great 
beads of sweat to stand upon her forehead. Up river along 
the quays there had already showed, as she crossed the 
bridge on to the Island of the Cite, a faint glimmer of dawn, 
but here in the courtyard all was still thick night. The 
gates of the Conciergerie opened rapidly and shut behind her. 

Her gaolers led the way down a long, low, and dark 
corridor, stiflingly close and warm, lit here and there with 
smoky candles. She heard the murmur of voices, and saw 
at the end of the passage a group of the police and of magis- 
trates at the door of the little room that was to be her cell. 
She entered through the throng, saw the official papers 
signed at the miserable little table, and heard the formal 
delivery of her person to the authorities of the prison; then 
they left her, and in their place came in a kindly woman, the 
wife of the porter, and with her a young girl, whose name 
she heard was Rosalie. The Queen sat down on the straw- 
bottomed chair and glanced round by the light of the candle 
beside her. 

It was a little low room, quite bare: damp walls, the 
paper of which, stamped with the royal fleur de lys, hung 

487 



488 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

mildewed, rose from a yet damper floor of brick set herring- 
bone-wise; a small camp-bed covered with the finest linen 
alone relieved it, and a screen some four feet high, between 
her and the door, afforded some little shelter. Above her 
a small barred window gave upon the paving of the prison 
yard, for the cell was half underground. Here Custine 
— who had lost the North and was to be executed for the fall 
of Valenciennes — had been confined till his removal but a 
few hours before to make way for the Queen. Here is 
now the canteen of the prison. 

It was very late. The new day was quite broad and 
full, showing the extreme paleness of her face and her 
weary eyes. She stood upon a little stuff-covered hassock, 
hung her watch upon a nail, and began to undress, to 
sleep if she might sleep for a few hours. A servant of 
the turnkey's, a girl called Rosalie, timidly offered her 
help; the Queen put her gently aside, saying: "Since I 
have no maid I have learnt to do all myself." They blew 
their candles out and left her to repose. 

On the fourth day, the 6th of August, they came again 
and took from her further things which a prisoner might 
not enjoy; among them that little watch of hers in gold. 
She gave it to them. It was the little watch which she had 
worn when she had come in as a child to Compiegne on 
her way to the great marriage and to the throne. It was 
the last of her ornaments. 

A routine began and lasted unbroken almost till August 
ended. In that little low cell, more than half underground, 
dimly lit by the barred window that stood level with the 
flags outside, day succeeded day without insult, but with- 
out relief, and here at last her strait captivity began what 
the Temple hitherto could never do. Her spirit did not 




LAST PORTRAIT OF MARIE ANTOINETTE 

Presumably sketched in the Temple ; now at Versailles 



THE HUNGER OF MAUBEUGE 489 

fail, but her body began to weaken, and in her attitude and 
gesture there had entered the appearance of despair. . . . 
Outside the Committee wondered whether their daring 
might not bear fruit, and whether, to save the Queen, the 
frontier might not be relieved. But no offer came from the 
Kings, and the hostage of the Republicans remained useless 
on their anxious hands. ... In Brussels Fersen heard 
and went wild, talked folly of an immediate march on Paris, 
cursed Coburg and all rules of war; but Coburg was not to 
be moved — he knew his trade, and still prepared the sieges. 
She had no privacy. All day long a corporal of police 
and his man sat on guard in a corner of the room. All 
night her door, in spite of its two great bolts, was guarded. 
For the rest her wants were served. She asked for a special 
water from the neighbourhood of what had been Ver- 
sailles, and she obtained it. They hired books for her. They 
permitted her good food and the daily expense upon it of a 
very wealthy woman.' The porter's wife and the maid 
were very tender to her. They put flowers on her small 
oak table and they marketed at her desire. Her other 
service wounded her; first an old woman who was useless, 
the turnkey's mother ; next a young virago, Havel by name, 
whose rudeness disturbed her. They would let her have 
no steel — not even the needles with which she was knitting 
for her little son, nor a knife to cut her food ; but more than 
all there sank into her the intolerable monotony, the fixed 
doubt, the utter isolation which made the place a tomb. 
The smallest incident moved her. She would watch her 
gaolers at their picquet and note the game, she would 
listen to distant music, she would greet with a dreadful 
reminiscence of her own the porter's little son, and cry over 

> What would come to a pound a day in our money, and at our scale of living — for the uncooked food alone. 



490 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

him a little and speak of the Dauphin — but this last scene 
was so vivid that at last they dared no longer bring the 
child. She kept for consolation all this while, hidden in 
her bosom, a little yellow glove of her boy's, and in it a 
miniature of him and a lock of his hair. 



Meanwhile Maubeuge: 

On the day which had seen the Queen enter the Con- 
ciergerie the Commander of Maubeuge issued the first 
warning of danger. The aged, the women and the children 
were invited to leave the shelter of the fortress and to betake 
themselves to the open country. That order was but 
partially obeyed — and still no provisions reached the 
town. 

Now that strong Valenciennes had fallen, the Allies 
had their business so thoroughly in hand that some debate 
arose among them whether the main garrison of Maubeuge 
should be assailed at once or whether the little outlying posts 
should be picked up first: the large and the small were 
equally certain to capitulate: there was ample leisure to 
choose. 

Coburg was for the main attack on Maubeuge — but 
he was not keen — the wretched little force at Cambrai 
would do to begin with — or even the handful in Le 
Quesnoy. It was simply a question of the order in which 
they should be plucked. 

The young Duke of York, acting as he was bidden to 
act from Westminster, proposed to divert some 40,000 
men to the capture of Dunkirk; for it must be remembered 
that all this war was a war of Conquest, that the frontier 
towns taken were to compensate the Allies after the Revolu- 



THE HUNGER OF MAUBEUGE 491 

tion had been destroyed, and that Dunkirk was historically 
a bastion of importance to England, and that all the advance 
was to end in the annexation of French land. 

This march upon Dunkirk has been condemned by 
most historians because it failed; had it succeeded none 
could have praised it too highly. Politically it was just in 
conception (for it gave Britain some balancing advantage 
against the Austrians their allies) , and as a military project 
it was neither rash nor ill-planned. The force left with 
Coburg was ample for his task, and nothing could be 
easier than for the Austrian army alone to reduce (as 
it did reduce) the worthless garrisons opposed to it, 
while the English commander was doing English work 
upon the right.* 

The combined forces spent the close of the week after 
Valenciennes had fallen in driving off such of the French 
as were still in the open under Kilmain. A few days later 
forty-seven battalions, of whom a full seventh were English 
and Irish men, marched off under York for Dunkirk, 
while Coburg at his ease sat down before the little town of 
Le Quesnoy, the last fortified support of Maubeuge upon 
the west. Upon the same day he brushed the French out 
of the wood of Mormal, the last natural obstacle which 
could protect Maubeuge when Le Quesnoy should have 
fallen. It was the 17th of August — but already in 
Paris there had passed one of the chief accidents of 
history : an accident from which were to flow all the tactics 
of the Great War, ultimately the successes of Napoleon, and 

• Even as it was and in spite of his failure before Dunkirk, the Duke of York had plenty of time to come 
back and help Coburg after that failure, and to have joined him in front of Maubeuge [before the French at- 
tempted the relief of that town. The English commander could easily have been present at Wattignies, and 
would probably or certainly have prevented that miracle. But no one foresaw the miracle. Coburg did not 
ask York to come till the 7th of October. York did not march till the lotb, and even then he thought he had 
the leisure to while a week upon forty miles! 



492 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

immediately the salvation of tlie Revolution: Lazare Carnot 
had been admitted to the Committee of Public Safety. 



In Paris the Queen endured that August: and, isolated 
from the world, she did not know what chances of war might 
imperil her through the fury of a defeated nation or might 
save her by the failure of the Terror and its martial law. 

As she thus waited alone and in silence the pressure 
upon the Republic grew. Lyons had risen when Marat 
died. Vendee was not defeated: before the month ended 
the English were in Toulon. 

As the hot days followed each other in their awful same- 
ness she still declined; her loss of blood never ceased, her 
vigour dwindled. A doctor of great position, the surgeon 
Souberbielle,' visited the cell and denounced its dampness 
for a danger: nothing was done. She lived on, knowing 
nothing of the world beyond and above those dirty walls, 
but vaguely she hoped or imagined an exchange and to 
be reunited with her children — to survive this unreal time 
and to find herself abroad again with living men. No 
change or interruption touched the long watch of her soul 
until, when she had already passed three weeks and more 
in nothingness, that inspector of police who had already 
befriended her in the Temple, Michonis, entered; and a 
certain companion, spare and wild-eyed was with him. 
It was a Wednesday; the last Wednesday in August; the 
month had yet three days to run. 

1 He was famous for his operations for the stone; sat upon the jury that condemned the Queen, was siun- 
moned for his art to Westminster Hospital, wondered in old age why the Restoration would not give his Euro- 
pean fame a salaried post; thought it might be a fear of his infirmities of^age; danced high vigourously before 
the Committee of medical patronage to prove, at ninety, his unimpaired vivacity, was refused any public 
salary, and died — some years later — a still active but disappointed man," fearing that his politics had had 
some secret effect in prejudicing the royal family against him." 



THE HUNGER OF MAUBEUGE 493 

These two were in league, and fantastic fortune had 
put an official of the city at her disposal for escape. 

The whole scene was rapid — she had barely time to 
understand the prodigious opportunity. She noticed in 
the hand of Michonis' companion a bunch of pinks — 
perhaps she half recognised his face (indeed, he had fought 
in defence of the palace) , she failed to take the flowers and 
he let them fall behind the stove — and the while Michonis 
was covering all by some official question or other. It was 
not a minute's work and they were gone: but in the flowers, 
when, after her bewilderment, she sought them, she found 
a note. Its contents offered her safety. Michonis (it ran) 
trusted as an official, would produce an order to transfer 
her person to some other prison ; in the passage he would 
permit her to fly. The note asked for a reply. 

She had no pen or pencil, but she found a plan for answer- 
ing, for she took a pin and pricked out painfully these words 
on a slip of paper: "I am watched; I neither write nor speak; 
I count on you; I will come." The policeman of her guard — 
not the corporal — had been bought. He took the slip of 
paper from her and gave it to the porter's wife, her friend. 
Next day Michonis called for it, knew that the Queen was 
ready, laid all his plans, and on the Monday, by night, 
appeared at the door of the Conciergerie with his official 
order for the removal of the Queen. 

Even in these few hours there had been time for treason. 
The policeman had revealed the message to the authorities. 
The faces Michonis saw at the gate of the prison by the 
sentry's lamp when he came up that Monday night, 
were not those he expected or knew. His plot was already 
in the hands of the Government and he was lost. 

Within, the Queen waited in an agony of silence for 



494 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

the sound of her deliverers; the hours of the morning drew 
on and the summer dawn of the Tuesday broadened; no 
steps had sounded on the stones of the passage : everything 
had failed. 

Her deliverer suffered. She herself was closely examined 
and transferred to another cell where she must wait, in a 
more rigid compulsion, for the end. 

No other human fortune' came to Marie Antoinette 
from that dav until, seven weeks later, she died. 



West and a little north of Maubeuge, but twenty miles 
away, the watchers a month and more before had heard 
the ceaseless guns round Valenciennes. Then had come 
the silence of the surrender. Now they heard much nearer, 
west and a little to the south, the loud fury of a new and 
neighbouring bombardment as the shot poured into Le 
Quesnoy. Soon, as they knew, those guns would be trained 
on their own walls. Little Le Quesnoy was the last of the 
line but one, and they, in Maubeuge, the last of all. The 
Monday, the first Monday in September, the Tuesday, the 
Wednesday, the Thursday, the Friday, all that week the 
garrison at Maubeuge listened to the endless sound which 
never faltered by day or by night, and they still wondered 
how long it might endure : there were but 6,000 in the little 
place and their doom was so certain that their endurance 
seemed quite vain. Sunday, and the guns never paused or 
weakened; the second Monday came and they still raged — 
but on the ninth day when the marvel seemed to have 
grown permanent, on the Tuesday (it was the day that 
the Queen was thrust into her second and more vigorous 

1 1 reject the story of her communion. 



THE HUNGER OF MAUBEUGE 495 

imprisonment) again — as with Valenciennes — the omin- 
ous silence came: Le Quesnoy was treating, and Maubeuge 
now made ready for its end. 

The free troops to the south and east (two poor divisions) 
moved doubtfully toward the entrenched camp of the 
fortress — knowing well that they must in a few days be 
contained: there was no food: there were not even muskets 
for them all. 

Around them by detachments the French forces were 
being eaten up. The little garrison of Cambray had 
marched out to relieve its neighbour — 6,000 men, three- 
quarters of the infantry regulars, three squadrons, and a 
battery of guns. The Hungarians rode through that 
battery before it could unlimber, refused to accept surrender, 
broke the line, and hacked and killed until a remnant got 
off at a run under the guns of Bouchain. Declaye, their 
general, survived; he was in Paris within forty-eight hours, 
tried within another forty-eight and on the morrow beheaded. 

For a fortnight these contemptuous successes on the 
fringe of Coburg's army continued, and the main force 
meanwhile was gathering supplies, calling in detachments, 
organising train, and making all ready for the last and 
decisive blow that should shatter Maubeuge. In Maubeuge 
they hurriedly and confusedly prepared. Such grain as 
they could gather from neighbouring farms was seized, 
many of "the useless and the suspect" were expelled, the 
able-bodied civilians were set to dig, to entrench, and to com- 
plain, and over all this work was a man worthy of the place 
and the occasion for, on a high morning, the 15th of 
September, but a day or two after the surrender of Le 
Quesnoy, there had gallopped into Maubeuge a repre- 
sentative of the Parliament well chosen by the Terror to 



496 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

superintend such an issue: he rode straight in the long 
stirrups of the cavalry with harsh, eccentric, and powerful, 
clean face ; a young man, dark and short and square : it was 
Drouet. 

The two divisions hung nervously, the one east, the other 
west of the fortress, making a show to dispute the passage 
of the river against forces three times their own in number 
and indefinitely their superiors in training and every quality 
of arms; on the 28th' of September, at dawn, Coburg 
crossed where he chose both above or below the town; 
of the French divisions one was swept, the other hunted 
into the fortress — before noon the thing was done, and 
the French force — happy to have escaped with but a partial 
panic — was blocked and held. With the next day the 
strain began, for the Austrians drove the surrounding 
peasantry within the walls and in the same hour burnt the 
stores accumulated outside the walls. On the third day the 
first of the horses within Maubeuge was killed for food. 

Drouet, for all his high heart, doubted if the Republic 
could deliver them and knew the sudden extremity of the 
town. He imagined a bold thing. On the 2nd of Octo- 
ber, the fourth day of the siege, he took a hundred dragoons 
— men of his own old arm — and set out cross the Austrian 
lines by night: he designed a long ride to the Meuse itself 
and the sending of immediate news to the Committee of the 
danger of Maubeuge; he feared lest those civilians in 
Paris should imagine that a week, ten days, a fortnight 
were all one to the beleaguered town and lest they should 
frame their plan of relief upon the false hope of a long siege. 
So he rode out — and the enemy heard the hoof -beats and 
caught him. They put that tall man in chains; they caged 

* Not as Gomini says, the 2()th. S 



THE HUNGER OF ]\L\UBEUGE 497 

him also and made him a show. In Brussels, Fersen, with 
a dreadful curiosity went to peep at his face behind the 
iron bars; in Paris the woman whose chance of flight he 
had destroyed at Varennes sat and awaited her judges. 



Three days passed in Maubeuge and all the meat, salted 
and fresh, was sequestrated. The manuscripts in the 
monastery were torn up for cartridges; everything was 
needed. On the next day, the 6th of October, hay and straw 
were commandeered. On the next, the 7th, a census of the 
food remaining showed, for over 30,000 adult men and all 
the women and children besides, barely 400 head, and of 
these more than three-quarters small sheep in poor condi- 
tion. Upon the 10th such little grain as the town contained 
was seized by the Commandant. The next day the whole 
population was upon half-rations and the townsmen were 
struggling with the soldiery. Upon the morrow again, the 
12th, counsel was taken of the desperate need to advise the 
Government that the place was all but gone, and it was 
designed that by night such as might volunteer should bear 
the news or perish in crossing the lines. 



That evening, the evening of the 12th, after dark, 
Marie Antoinette was led out from her cell for that pre- 
liminary Interrogation which, in French procedure, pre- 
ceeds the public trial. They led her from her little cell, 
through the narrow passages, into a great empty hall. Two 
candles, the only lights in that echoing darkness, stood upon 
the table. 

She was in a deep ignorance of her position and of Europe. 



498 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

The silence of the room corresponded to the silence within 
her: its darkness to the complete loneliness of her heart. 
She did not know what were the fortunes of the French 
army, what advance, if any, had been made by their en- 
emies — whom she still regarded as her rescuers. She knew 
nothing of the last desperate risk upon the frontier which 
the Eepublic ran; she knew nothing of the steps by which 
she had been brought to this position, the demand in 
Parliament for her execution as the news from the front 
got worse and worse: the summoning of the Court: the 
formation of the Bench that was to try her. Least of all 
did she know that the extreme mad group whom Hebert 
led had gone to her little sickly son suggesting to him 
(probably believing what they suggested) nameless cor- 
ruptions from her hand : to these they believed he had been 
witness, nay, himself a victim; she did not know that to these 
horrors that group had caused the child's trembling signa- 
ture to be affixed. . . . He had sat there swinging his 
legs in the air from the high chair in which they had placed 
him to question him: he had answered "Yes" to all they 
suggested. . . he was her little son! She, imprisoned 
far off from him, knew nothing of that hellish moment. 
She was utterly deserted. She saw nothing but the dark 
empty room and the two pale candles that shone upon 
the faces of the men who were soon to try her: they 
marked in relief the aquiline face of the chief Judge, 
Herman. The other faces were in darkness. 

Certain questions privately put to her were few and 
simple, a mere preliminary to the trial; she answered them 
as simply in her own favour. Her dress was dark and poor. 
She sat between two policemen upon a bench in the vast 
black void of the unfurnished hall and answered, and. 



THE HUNGER OF MAUBEUGE 499 

when she had answered, signed. She answered con- 
ventionally that she wished the country well, that she had 
never wished it ill, she signed (as they told her to sign) under 
the title of the "widow of Capet." They named two 
barristers to defend her, Chauveau Lagarde and Tron9on 
Ducourdray, and she was led back to her cell and to her 
silence. Next day the 13th, these lawyers were informed 
and came to consult with her. 



Upon the 13th by night, twelve dragoons volunteered 
to take news out of Maubeuge, a sergeant leading them. 
They swam the Sambre and got clean away. They rode 
all night, they rode by morning into Philippeville and begged 
that three cannon shots might be fired, for that was the 
signal by which Maubeuge was to know that they had 
brought news of the hard straits of the city beyond the 
Austrian lines. They rode on without sleep to Givet, and 
there at last they heard that an army was on the march, 
straight for the relief of the siege. 

Carnot had gathered that army, bringing in the scattered 
and broken detachments from the right and the left, con- 
centrating them upon Avesnes, until at last he had there to 
his hand 45,000 men. Carnot was there in Avesnes and 
we have records of the ragged army, some of them fresh 
from defeats, most of them worthless, pouring in. There 
were those who had one shoe, there were those who had 
none; they were armed in varying fashion; they were wholly 
under-gunned. The boys straggled, marched, or drooped 
in, the gayer of them roaring marching songs, but the 
greater part disconsolate. With such material, in one 
way or another, Carnot designed to conquer. Maubeuge 



500 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

had been upon half-rations since the beginning of the week, 
it might ask for terms in any hour, and between him and it 
stretched the long high line of wood wherein Coburg lay 
entrenched impregnably. 



The nominal command of the hosts so gathered was in 
the hands of Jourdan, a travelling draper who had volun- 
teered in the American War, whom the Committee of 
Public Safety had discovered, once more a draper, and to 
whom it had given first the army of the Ardennes, then this 
high post before Maubeuge. He was a man of simple 
round features and of easy mind; he had but just been set 
at the head of the Army of the North: left to himself he 
would have lost it — and his head. But the true com- 
mander was not Jourdan, it was Carnot. Carnot came to 
represent only the force of the Parliament of which he was 
a member and the force of the Committee of Public Safety 
of which he was the brain ; but once on the field he exceeded 
both these capacities and became, what he had always been, 
a soldier. His big and ugly, bulging forehead with its lean 
whisp of black hair hid the best brain and overhung the 
best eye for tactics of all those that preceded, and formed 
the final effect of, Napoleon's armies. 

The great Carnot in Avesnes that night stood like a 
wrestler erect and ready, his arms free, his hands unclenched, 
balancing to clutch the invader and to try the throw. He, 
with that inward vision of his, saw the whole plan of the 
struggle from south to north, and overlooked the territory 
of the French people as a mountain bird overlooks the Plain. 
He knew the moment. He knew it not as a vague, intense, 
political fear, nor even as a thesis for the learned arms and 



THE HUNGER OF MAUBEUGE 501 

for the staff, but as a visible and a real world: he saw the 
mountains and the rivers, the white threads of roads radia- 
ting from Paris to all the points of peril, of rebellion or of 
disaster; he saw the armies in column upon them, the massed 
fronts, the guns. He saw the royal flag over Toulon and 
the English fleet in harbour there, he saw the bush and 
the marsh of Vendee still unconquered, he saw the resistance 
of Lyons (for he had no news of its surrender) ; above all 
he saw those two doors against which the invader leaned, 
which were now pushed so far ajar and which at any moment 
might burst open — the lines of Weissembourg ; and here, 
right to his hand, the entrenchments that covered the last 
siege of the northern frontier. He saw reeling and nearly 
falling, the body of the Republic that was his religion, and 
he saw that all the future, death or life, lay in Maubeuge. 

The Sunday night fell over Paris and over those long 
Flemish hills. The morrow was to see the beginning of 
two things : the trial of the Queen and the opening of a battle 
which was to decide the fate of the French people. 



XX 

WATTIGNIES 

Monday, the 14th of October: — 

Oct. 14, 1793. The fate of the Queen and of the Republic 
6 a. m. jjad each come to a final and critical issue when 

the light broke, dully in either place, over Paris and over 
the pastures of the frontier. There the army lay to arms 
in the valley, with Coburg entrenched upon the ridge above 
them, and beyond him the last famine of Maubeuge; from 
dawn the French lines could hear, half a day's march to the 
northward, the regular boom of the bombardment. But 
Carnot was now come. 

Oct. 14, 1793. -^^ Paris, when it was broad day, the chief 
In Paris, 8 a.m. court above the prison was prepared. 

The populace had crammed the side galleries of the great 
room and were forming a further throng, standing in the 
space between the doors and the bar. The five Judges, 
Herman the chief, filed on to the Bench; a little below 
them, and on their right, a jury of fifteen men was empan- 
elled. It was on the courage, the conviction, or the fan- 
aticism of these that the result would turn. 

They presented, as they sat there awaiting the prisoner, 
a little model of the violent egalitarian mood which had 
now for a year and more driven the military fury of the 
Republic. Among them would be seen the refined and 
somewhat degraded face of a noble who had sat in the 

50g 



WATTIGNIES 503 

earlier Parliaments, and who had drifted as Orleans had 
drifted — but further than had Orleans. There also were 
the unmistakable eyes of precision which were those of an 



Battle of 

iWATTlGNIES 

OCT. 15^" 1. 16'." 1793 

AND TNt 

REUtF or MAUBEUGC 

StaTearEntirsliMllu 




y ^■X\ n CARNOr'S 

< ^^ \\ ^\ I •2".'' Heojdqra. 

( Wktliinies! I I Octie^Mornini 

1/ 



REFERENCE 

A. Point where Frnmentis w»8 checked on Drat dnjr Oct. I5th 

B. Approximate point at which the Aiiitri.in rally broke aud the action was 

decided on Eerond Aa-j Oct. IGth 
1.2.3-4.5.. Passages of the Sambre 

— -^^ Crest of plateau covering Mniibeuee defended by Angtrlans 
H^^B Anstrians round jiaubeuge and on crest of plateaa on Oct. 15th 
I I French line just before assault on Oct, 15th, also garrison of Maubeage 

I -^ Reinforcements arrived from French centre and left In the night and lines 

*~ ~ of their assault 

n y Austrian retirement on Bridges of Sambre after their line had been 
turned at Y>'attignies Oct. 16th 



optician, a maker of instruments. There were, resting on 
the rail of the box, the firm hands of a great surgeon 
(Souberbielle). A few of the common people were mingled 



504 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

with these: contractors also, prosperous men, and master- 
carpenters. There was a hatter there, and a barber, a 
man who had made violins, and another who painted pic- 
tures for the rich. Of such elements was the body com- 
prised which had now to determine so much in the history 
of Europe. Above them a presiding figure, Herman the 
Judge, with his dark aquiline face, controlled them all. 
They looked all of them towards the door that led from the 
cells below, where two warders came upward through it, 
leading between them the Queen. 

She also as she entered saw new things. The silence 
and the darkness of her long imprisonment fell from her: 
the noise of the streets came in from the windows before 
her; she heard the rumour iand she saw the movement of 
the populace which — save for that brief midnight drive 
two months ago — had been quite cut off from her since 
last she had shrunk from the mob on the evening when she 
had heard the gate of the Temple bolted behind her car- 
riage. After that hush, which had been so dreadfully 
divided by evil upon evil, she came out suddenly into the 
sound of the city and into the general air. In that inter- 
val the names of months and of days, the mutual saluta- 
tions of men, religion and the very habit of life had changed. 
In that interval also the nation had passed from the shock 
of arms to unimagined crimes, to a most unstable victory, 
to a vision of defeat and perhaps of annihilation. France 
was astrain upon the edge of a final deliverance or of a 
final and irretrievable disaster. Its last fortress was all 
but fallen, all its resources were called out, all its men 
were under arms, over the fate of the frontier hung a 
dreadful, still silence. In the very crisis of this final 
doubt and terror the Queen stood arraigned. 



WATTIGNIES 505 

The women lowered their knitting-needles and kept them 
still. The little knot of Commissioners sitting with Counsel 
for the State, the angry boys in the crowd who could remem- 
ber wounds or the death of comrades, stretched forward 
to catch sight of her as she came up the stairs between her 
guards : they were eager to note if there had been any change. 

She had preserved her carriage, which all who knew her 
had regarded since her childhood as the chief expression 
of her soul. She still moved with solemnity and with that 
exaggerated but unflinching poise of the head which, in 
the surroundings of Versailles, had seemed to some so 
queenly, to others so affected; which here, in her last hours, 
seemed to all, as she still preserved it, so defiant. For 
the rest she was not the same. Her glance seemed dull 
and full of weariness; the constant loss of blood which 
she had suffered during those many weeks spent below 
ground had paled her so that the artificial, painted red 
of her cheeks was awful in that grey morning, and her 
still ample hair was ashen and touched with white, save 
where some traces of its old auburn could be, perhaps, 
distinguished. 

She was in black. A little scarf of lace was laid with 
exactitude about her shoulders and her breast, and on her 
head she wore a great cap which a woman who loved her, 
the same who had served her in her cell, put on her as she 
went to her passion. The pure white of this ornament 
hung in great strings of lawn on either side, and round it 
and beneath it she had wound the crape of her widowhood. 
So dressed, and so standing at the bar, so watched in silence 
by so many eyes, she heard once more the new sound which 
yesterday she had first learned to hate: the hard and nasal 
voice of Herman. He asked her formally her name. 



506 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

She answered in a voice which was no longer strong, but 
which was still clear and well heard in that complete silence: 

"Marie Antoinette of Austria, some thirty-eight years 
old, widow to Louis Capet, the King of France." 

To the second formal question on the place ot her first 
arrest, that: 

"It was in the place where the sittings of the National 
Assembly were held." 

The clerk, a man of no great learning, wrote his heading : 
"The 23rd day of the first month of the fourth year of Free- 
dom," and when he had done this he noted her replies, and 
Herman's short questions also : his bidding to the jury that 
they must be firm, to the prisoner that she must be attentive. 

Into the clerk's writing there crept, as there will into that 
of poor men, certain grievous errors of grammar which in an 
earlier (and a later) time would not have appeared in the 
record of the meanest court trying a tramp for hunger; 
but it was the Revolution and they were trying a Queen, so 
everything was strange; and this clerk called himself Fabri- 
cius, which had a noble sound — but it was not his name. 

This clerk read the list of witnesses and the indictment 
out loud. 

When these formalities were over they brought a chair. 
The Queen sat down by leave of the court and the trial 
began. She saw rising upon her right a new figure of a 
kind which she had not known in all her life up to the day 
when the door of the prison had shut her out from the noise 
and change of the world. It was a figure of the Terror, 
Fouquier Tinville. His eyes were steadfast, the skin of 
his face was brown, hard and strong; he was a hired poli- 
tician, covered with the politician's outer mask of firmness. 
Within he was full of the politician's hesitation and ner- 



WATTIGNIES 507 

vous inconstancy. A genuine poverty and a politician's 
hunger for a salary had been satisfied by the post of Pub- 
lic Prosecutor. He earned that salary with zeal and with 
little discernment, and therefore, when the time came, 
he also was condemned to die. It was he now in this fore- 
noon who opened against the Queen. 

His voice was harsh and mechanical : his speech was long, 
dull, and violent: rhetorical with that scenic and cardboard 
rhetoric which is the oflScial commonplace of all tribunals. 
The Widow Capet was Messalina; she was a leech; she was 
a Merovingian Tyrant; she was a Medicis. She had held 
relations with the "Man called King" of Bohemia and 
Hungary; she had urged Capet on to all his crimes. She 
had sent millions to aid her family in their war against 
the French people. She had woven the horrid plot of the 
10th of August, which nothing but incredible valour had 
defeated. She was the main enemy which the new and angry 
Freedom for which he spoke had had to meet and to conquer. 

Apart from its wearisome declamation the accusation 
was true; save that — through no fault of her own, poor 
woman ! — she had not aided the foreign cause with gold, 
all the story was evident and publicly known. She sat as 
near this orator as is a nurse to a bedside. She heard him 
with her suffering and disdainful face quite fixed and 
unmoved, save at one point: the mention of her son. 

Fouquier Tinville was sane: he saw the crass absurdity 
of Hebert's horrors, he barely touched upon them very 
hurriedly (and as the rapid and confused words escaped 
him, her lips twitched with pain), but even as he did so, he 
knew he had given the defence a hold. 

It is held on principle in French Courts that an impar- 
tial presentation of the truth cannot be obtained unless 



508 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

witnesses are heard in a chance sequence, not divided into 
friends and foes, as with us, but each (such is the 
theory) telHng what he believes to be the truth. Even in 
these political trials of the Terror (which were rather 
Courts -martial or condemnations than trials) the rule was 
observed, and when Fouquier sat down the file of wit- 
nesses began. 

The parade was futile. For plain political facts known 
to the whole world no list of witnesses was needed, nor 
could their evidence be of the least avail. Moreover, 
that evidence was lacking. The witnesses defiled one 
after the other, each vaguer than the last, to prove (and 
failing to prove) things that w^ere commonplaces to all 
Europe. Long past midday the empty procession contin- 
ued through the drowsy hours past one o'clock and two; 
remembering trifles of her conduct true and false. To every 
assertion as the Judge repeated it (true or false), she 
answered quietly by a denial; that denial was now false, 
now true. 

Even if the Revolutionary Tribunal could have subpoenaed 
Mallet or the Emperor or Fersen, it would have meant 
little to the result. Her guilt, if it was guilt so to scheme 
against the nation, was certain; what yet remained in doubt 
was the political necessity of such a trial at such a mo- 
ment, the limit of hardihood in her Judges and the possible 
effect in a democracy of public sympathy at some critical 
phase of the pleadings — and much more potent than any 
of these three, because it included them all, was the news 
that might come at any moment from the frontier and from 
the hunger of Maubeuge — no news came. 

Last of these witnesses Hebert, all neat and powdered, 
presented his documents and put forward his abomina- 



WATTIGNIES 609 

tions, his jfixed idea of incest. The public disgust might 
here have turned the trial. There was a stir all round: 
her friends began to hope. As for the oflScials, they could 
not stop Hebert's mouth, but Herman was careful to omit 
the customary repetition: he was hurrying on to the next 
witness when a juryman of less wit than his fellows and filled 
with the enormous aberrations of hate, pressed the charge. 

The Queen would not reply. She half rose from her 
chair and cried in a high voice: *'I appeal to every mother 
here," and then sank back again. 

The crowd in the galleries began to move and murmur, 
the women raised their voices against the angry orders of 
the ushers and of the Bench demanding silence. Away, 
dining beyond the Seine, Robespierre, hearing of it, broke 
a plate at table in his anger, and thought Hebert's lunacy 
had saved her. A further witness, though he spoke of the 
flight to Varennes, could hardly be heard, and spoke quite 
unheeded; and when he had concluded, the Court abruptly 
rose in the midst of the commotion, hubbub and change. 

The Queen was led to her cell, keeping, as she left her 
place, in spite of her hopeless fatigue, the steady step where- 
with she had entered ; and as she passed she heard one woman 
in the press sneering at her pride. 

It was three o'clock. The first act in that long agony 
had lasted, without food or breathing time, for seven hours. 



While the Republic thus held the old world prisoner in 
Paris, and tortured it in the person of the Queen, 
out on the frontier in the water-meadows of Before Mau- 
Avesnes, the Republic lay in its chief peril from ^^^^' *' ^' 
the old world free and armed. Coburg and every privilege 



510 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

held the crest of the hills invincibly, and Maubeuge was 
caught fast, unreachable beyond the entrenchments of 
that ridge. 

Carnot, looking westward down the valley of the Helpe, 
saw the deep orchards laden with October, nourished by 
the small and very winding stream. He saw the last 
French frontier hamlets and their mills. St. Hilaire, 
Dompierre, Tenieres, dwindling away to where, far off 
in its broad trench, ran the Sambre. 

Before him also in this valley, as he looked westward 
down it, he saw stretched for some ten miles the encamp- 
ment of his army: bivouac after bivouac, one beyond the 
other along the lines, and smoke rising from them. Tall 
hedges, not yet bare, divided the floor of the valley and the 
village grounds: here, also, Caesar had marched through 
against the Nervii: for this corner of Europe is a pack 
of battlefields. Malplaquet lay just before the army; 
within a march, Fleurus; within sound of cannon, 
Jemappes. 

Up above them beyond that wood of Avesnes, the line 
of the heights along the sky, was the enemy. It had loomed 
so dark before the late, dull and rainy dawn, that they had 
seen the notches in that line which were the emplacement 
of guns. The early afternoon had shone upon the sides 
of the hills, and the French outposts had seen the outposts 
of the evening busy in the little villages that mark the foot 
of the slopes: St. Vaast, Dourlers, Foursies. And all day 
long boomed to the north behind the hills the sullen guns 
before Maubeuge. At any hour that dull repeated sound 
might cease, and it would mean that the last fortress had 
fallen. 

All that day Carnot passed in silence. The troops. 



WATTIGNIES 511 

some last detachments of which had but just marched in, 
lay dully in such repose as soldiers can steal: a jumble 
of forty patchwork battalions, militia, regulars, loud vol- 
unteers, old stark gunners; they listened to the distant and 
regular thunder of the siege. In some stations the few 
horses were grooming: in others, fewer still, the rare guns 
were cleaned. 

An hour before dusk the six generals were called to Car- 
not's tent, and here and there the bugles roused 

' ^ ^ Oct. 14, 1793. 

the troops called for reconnaissance. These few Before Mau- 
detachments crossed the woods, pierced gaps in ^^^^' ^' ™* 
the hedges,* to prepare the advance of the morrow, noted 
and exchanged shots with the outposts of the evening, and 
at evening they retired. As they retired Carnot gave orders 
to the guns. Out of effective range, vague and careless of 
a target, they fired and proclaimed the presence of a reliev- 
ing army to the besieged. 

Maubeuge, in that still evening, during a lull of the 
siege-pieces, heard those French guns, and Ferrant and the 
general officers with him counselled a sortie. Only 
Chancel stood out, but Chancel was in command of the 
camp of Maubeuge, and his authority was unassailable. 
He did not distinguish the French fire, he thought it Aus- 
trian; no instinct moved him. Therefore, all the next 
day, while the battle was engaged, the garrison of Maubeuge 
failed to move; and later, for this error, Chancel was tried 
and killed. =* 

The troops fell back again through the wood of 
Avesnes and slept the last sleep before the battle. In 

' So on the same field had Caesar been compelled to clear the hedgerows. So little does the French peasantry 
change in a thousand years, and so tenacious is each French province of its customs. 
* And the other version is that Chancel was for moving but that Ferrant would not. Choose. 



512 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

Paris during that same evening, the long trial of the 
Queen proceeded. 



Oct. 17,1793. ^t five, just at that hour when Carnot was 
In Paris,' 6 p. m. recalling his scouts and ordering that warning 
cannon, the Court gathered and the prisoner was recalled. 

In her cell she had not been silent. 

As a great actress in an interval between her hardest 
lines will refuse repose and will demand rather comment 
or praise, so had she filled this little respite of two hours 
with questions and with doubts professed. She had dwelt 
upon the forms of the trial, she had begged her counsel to 
reassure her. She had despised the evidence. She had 
said she feared but one witness — Manuel — and indeed 
all who could have spoken as eye-witnesses to a hundred 
notorious truths were now over the frontier or dead. 

With her entry the trial was resumed and the file of wit- 
nesses continued. It was as monotonous and as vague 
as before. Even Manuel, whom she had feared, was vague, 
and the very servants of the prison (though they had been 
witnesses to conspiracy) were uncertain and rambling. 
And this fatuity of the witnesses, who were so solemnly 
and so strictly examined, did not proceed from the tur- 
moil of the time alone, nor even from the certitude which 
all then had (and which history has now) upon the past 
action of the Queen in cherishing the hope of foreign domi- 
nation and in procuring it: rather did it proceed from the 
fact that these dreadful days were filled not with a judicial 
but with a political action, and that the Court was met, 
not to establish truths at once unprovable and glaring, 
but to see whether or no the Revolution could dare to con- 



WATTIGNIES 513 

demn the prisoner. It was an act of War and a challenge 
to What lay entrenched up there before Maubeuge, train- 
ing its guns on the last hope, the ragged army in the valley 
of Avesnes below. 

If all the witnesses which history possesses to-day, if 
Boville, Fersen, Mallet, could have been brought into that 
Court and have had the Truth dragged from them, it would 
have affected the issue very little. One thing could alone 
affect that issue, the news of victory: and no news came. 
All reports from the frontier had ceased. 

The lights in the Court were lit, smoky and few. The 
air, already foul from the large concourse, grew heavy 
even for the free; for the sickened prisoner it became 
intolerable as the night hours drew in — six dark, inter- 
minable hours. She heard the succeeding witnesses distantly, 
more distantly. Her head was troubled, and her injured eye- 
sight failed her. It was very late. The droning of the night 
was in her ears. She vaguely knew at last that there was 
a movement around her and that the Court was rising. 
She asked faintly for water. Busne, the oflficer in guard 
of her, brought it to her and she drank. As he supported 
her with some respect down the short passage to her cell 
he heard her murmuring: "I cannot see. . . . I can- 
not see. ... I have come to the end. . . ." 

She lay down when her doors had received her, and just 
before midnight she fell asleep. She slept deeply, and 
for the last time. 



Tuesday, October 15. 

A little before dawn the French bugles upon the frontier 
roused the troops of Avesnes; their calls ran down the line, 



514 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

they passed from the Diane to the Generale, the woods 
before them sent back echoes, and soon the 

Oct. 15, 1793. 1 -r^ «. 1 1 P T^ 

Before Mau- army movcd. Far on upon the leit Jbromentin, 
teuge, 6 a. m. ^^^^ ^^le far right Duquesnoy, began marching 
forwards and inwards converging, but the main body in the 
centre took the high road, which, if it could force its pass- 
age, would lead them straight to Maubeuge. 

The sun was still level over the glinting wet fields when 
Carnot came to the summit of the long swell whence could 
be perceived, over an intervening hollow, the village of 
Dourlers, and above it the level fringe of trees which held 
the Austrian cannon; an impregnable crest upon whose 
security Coburg and the Allies founded the certitude of 
victory. The guns began. 

Among the batteries of the French (too few for their 
task), two batteries, one of sixteen-pounders, the other of 
twelve, were the gift of the city of Paris. By some acci- 
dent these, though ill-manned, silenced the Austrian fire 
at one critical and central point above Dourlers itself and 
close to the highroad. Whether the French aptitude for 
this arm had helped to train the volunteers of the city, or 
whether these had such a leaven of trained men as suf- 
ficed to turn the scale, or whether (as is more probable) 
some error or difficulty upon the opposing slope or some 
chance shot had put the invaders out of action, cannot 
be known. Carnot seized upon the moment and ordered 
the charge. As his columns advanced to carry Dourlers 
he sent word at full speed to either wing that each 
must time itself by the centre, and forbade an advance 
upon the left or right until the high road should be 
forced and the centre of the Austrian position pierced 
or confused. 



WATTIGNIES 515 

As he stood there, looking down from the height where 
the road bifurcates, all the battle was plain to him, but his 
sapper's eye for a plan watched the wings much more 
anxiously than they watched the centre before him. The 
stunted spire of Wattignies a long way off to the east, 
the clump that hid St. Remy to the west, marked strong 
bodies of the enemy, and, in the open plateau beyond, 
their numerous cavalry could crush either extremity of his 
line (which at either extremity was weak) should either be 
tempted forward before the centre had succeeded. The 
front was long — over five miles — he could not enforce 
sagacity nor even be certain of intelligence, and as he 
doubted and feared the action of his distant lieutenants, 
he saw the centre advancing beneath his eyes. 

The Austrian cannon had abandoned the duel. The 
French line approached Dourlers, deployed, and began the 
ascent. A sudden and heavy fire of musketry from the 
hollow road and from the hedges met the sixteen thousand 
as they charged; they did not waver, they reached the 
garden walls, and closed until, to those watching from the 
hill, the attempt was confused and hidden by a rolling 
smoke and the clustered houses of the village. It was past 
mid-morning. 



In Paris they had wakened the Queen, tardily. 
She wondered, perhaps, to see De Busne not there. He 
had suffered arrest in the night, he was de- „ ,.,„„„ 

o Oct. 16, 1793. 

tained to see if he could tell the Court or the in Paris, 
Committee some secret gathered from his pris- 
oner. It was under another guard that she left her cell. 
It was nearly nine before the Court assembled in the 



516 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

dull light, and later before the futile drag of evidence was 
renewed. 

Whether sleep had revived her, or whether some rem- 
nant of her old energy had returned to her for such an 
occasion, no further weakness was perceived in the Queen. 
She sat, as she had sat all the day before, until her faint- 
ness had come upon her, very ill, pale, and restrained, 
but erect and ready for every reply. Moreover, in that 
morning the weary monotony of such hours was broken 
by an incident which illuminated, though it made more 
bitter, the last of her sad days; for after D'Estaing, the 
Admiral, had been heard to no purpose, another noble, 
also a prisoner, was called; and as she saw his face she 
remembered better times, when the struggle was keen and 
not hopeless, and when this bewildering Beast, that called 
itself now *' Freedom,'* now "The Nation," had been 
tamed by the class which still governed Europe outside 
and which in that day controlled her kingdom also. It 
was Latour du Pin, the soldier who had been responsible 
for the repression of the mutiny at Nancy, three years — 
three centuries — before. 

He still lived. Against no man had '93 a better ground 
for hate, and indeed the time came when the Revolution 
sent him down also to meet his victims under the earth; 
but so far his commanding head was firm upon his shoul- 
ders. He enjoyed, as did all the prisoners of that time, 
the full use of his wealth. He was clothed, and fed in the 
manner of his rank. He entered, therefore, with pride, 
and with that mixture of gaiety and courage, upon which, 
since the wars of religion, all his kind had justly plumed 
themselves; and as he entered he bowed with an exces- 
sive ceremony to the Queen. 



WATTIGNIES 517 

The Judge asked him the formal question: Whether 
he recognised the prisoner? He bowed again and 
answered: "Indeed I know this Lady very well"; and in a 
few moments of his examination he defended himself and 
her with a disdainful ease that brought Versailles back 
vividly out of its tomb. 

Revived or stung by such a memory, the Queen replied 
to question after question exactly and even with some 
power: upon her frivolities, her expenses, her Trianon — 
all the legends of debauch which were based upon that 
very real and very violent fugue of pleasure in which she had 
wasted her brilliant years. The close of that dialogue alone 
has a strict interest for history, when Herman came at last 
to the necklace. Trianon had been on his lips a dozen 
times, and as he spoke the word he remembered that other 
fatal thing: — 

"Was it not in Trianon that you first came to know the 
woman La Motte .?" 

"I never saw her!" 

"Was she not your victim in the affair of the necklace .P" 

"She could not be, for I had never known her!" 

"You still deny it.?" 

"I have no plan to deny. It is the truth, and I shall 
always say the same." 

It is a passage of great moment, for here indeed the pris- 
oner said precisely what was true and precisely what all, 
even those who would befriend her, least believed to be true. 
She would pretend a love for the French and a keen regard 
for their glory — even for the success of their armies. 
She would pretend to have obeyed the King and not to 
have led him; to have desired nothing for her son but only 
the welfare of the people. Trapped and abandoned, 



518 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

she thought every answer, however false, legitimate; but 
in that one thing in which her very friends had doubted 
her, another spirit possessed her and her words were 
alive with truth. 

After that episode no further movement followed. There 
was opened before the Court (as the law compelled) her 
little pocket and the trinkets taken from her on the day 
of her imprisonment : the poor relics of her affection — the 
lock of hair, the miniature — were laid before the Judges. 
They heard Simon, the cobbler, in whose house her son 
was lodged — perhaps she looked more curiously at his 
face than at others — but he had nothing to say. They 
heard the porter of the Temple and sundry others who had 
seen, or pretended to have seen, her orders for the pay- 
ments of sundry thousands — but all that business was 
empty and all those hours were wasted: it was not upon 
such vanities that the mind of Paris and of the crowded 
Court was turned, but upon the line of Flemish hills a long 
way off and upon the young men climbing up against 
the guns. 

Paris and the mob in the street outside that Court of Jus- 
tice and the hundreds crammed within it strained to 
hear, not Valaze, nor Tiset, nor any other useless witness 
but some first breath of victory that might lift off them the 
oppression of those days; nay, some roaring news of defeat, 
and of Coburg marching upon them: then, at least, 
before their vision was scattered by the invader, they 
could tear this Austrian woman from her too lenient Judges 
for a full vengeance before they themselves and that which 
they had achieved should die. At the best or at the worst, 
they panted for a clear knowledge of their fortune; but on 
through the day and well into the afternoon, when the 



WATTIGNIES 519 

Court rose for its brief interval, no hint or rumour even had 
come to Paris from before Maubeuge. 



Carnot had come down the hill from the fork of the 
roads; he, and Jourdon beside him, followed 

' , ^ ' Oct. 15, 1793. 

behind the assault, bringing the headquarters Before Maubeuge, 
of that general plan some half-mile forward. 
So they knew that the village of Dourlers was held. It was 
noon before the place was secured, and now all depended 
upon the action of the extreme wings. 

It was certain that the struggle for this central village 
would be desperate: all depended upon the extreme wings. 
If these (and both of them) could hold hard and neither 
advance too far up the slope nor suffer (either of them) 
a beating-in, then the work at Dourlers would be decisive. 
And, indeed, the village was won, lost, and won, and lost 
again: all the hard work was there. The French carried it, 
they went beyond, they were almost upon the ridge above 
it. In the upland field below the crest of wood the Aus- 
trian cavalry under Muffling struck them in flank, and 
they were disordered. They were back in the village of 
Dourlers, and the fight for it was from house to house and 
from window to window. Twice it was cleared, twice lost. 
The French carry to an immortal memory a lad of four- 
teen who slipped forward in those attacks, got in behind 
the lines of the Hungarian Grenadiers who held the market 
place, and, in lanes beyond, drummed the charge to make 
his comrades think that some were already so far for- 
ward, and thus to urge them on. Many years after, in 
digging up that ground, his little bones were found buried 
sidelong with the bones of the tall Hungarian men; and 



520 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

he has now his statue beating the charge and looking out 
towards the frontier from the gateways of Avesnes. 

I have said that the horns of that crescent, the extreme 
wings, were ordered to be cautious, and warned that their 
caution alone could save the fight ; for if they went too far 
while Dourlers in the centre was still doubtful, that centre 
would certainly be thrown back by such a general as 
Coburg, who knew very well the breaking-point of a con- 
cave line. The fourth attack upon Dourlers was prepared 
and would have succeeded when Carnot heard that Fro- 
mentin, upon the far left, upon the extreme tip of the horn 
of that crescent, had carried his point of the ridge, and, 
having carried it, had had the folly to pursue ; he had found 
himself upon the plateau above (an open plateau bare of 
trees and absolutely bare of cover), with his irregulars all 
boiling, and his regulars imagining success. Weak in cavalry, 
commanding men untrained to any defensive, he found 
opposed to him the cavalry reserve of the enemy — a vast 
front of horse suddenly charging. That cavalry smashed 
him all to pieces. His regulars here and there formed 
squares, his irregulars tried to, they were sabred and gal- 
loped down. They lost but four guns (though four counted 
in so undergunned an army), but, much worse, they lost 
their confidence altogether. They got bunched into the 
combes and hollows, the plateau was cleared. They in 
their turn were pursued, and it would have been a rout but 
for two accidents: the first accident was the presence of a 
fresh reserve of French cavalry ; small indeed, but very well 
disciplined, strict and ready, certain Hussars who in 
a red flash (their uniform was red) charged on their 
little horses and for a moment stopped the flood of the 
enemy. The check so given saved the lives though not 



WATTIGNIES 521 

the position of the French left wing.' It was beaten. It 
was caved in. 

The second accident was the early close of an October 
day. The drizzling weather, the pall of clouds, curtained 
in an early night, and the left thus failing were not wholly 
destroyed: but their failure had ruined the value of the 
central charge upon Dourlours. The final attack upon 
that central village was countermanded; the Austrians 
did not, indeed, pursue the retreat of the French centre 
from its walls and lanes, but the conception of the battle 
had failed. 



In the Court-room, in Paris, during those hours, while 
the Judges raised the sitting, the Queen sat oct. is, 1793. 
waiting for their return; they brought her ^^^^"S'Sp-"- 
soup which she drank; the evening darkened, the Judges 
reappeared, and the trial began anew. 

The witnesses called upon that last evening, when the 
lights were lit and the long night had begun, were for the 
most part those who had come personally into the pres- 
ence or into the service of the Queen. Michonis especially, 
who was rightly under arrest for attempting her rescue, 
appeared; Bruiner appeared; the doctor who had attended 
to the children in the Temple. The farce went on. The 
night grew deeper, the witnesses succeeded each other. 
All that they had to say was true. Nothing they said could 
be proved. One put forward that she had written some 
note asking if the Swiss could be relied upon to shoot down 
the people. She had said and written one hundred of such 
things. Her counsel, who were mere lawyers, worried about 
the presentation of the document — meanwhile night 



522 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

hastened onwards, and the stars behind their veil of an 
October cloud continually turned. 

• ••■«••< 

Upon the frontier the damp evening and the closed night 
had succeeded one the other, and all along the 
Before Mauteuge, valley of the little rivcr it was foggy and dark. 
p.in. ^j^^ dead lay twisted where they had fallen 

during that unwrought fight, and a tent pitched just 
behind the lines held the staff and Carnot. He did 
not sleep. There was brought to him in those mid- 
night hours a little note, galloped in from the far south; 
he read it and crumpled it away. It is said to have been the 
news that the lines of Weissembourg were forced — and so 
they were. The Prussians were free to pass those gates 
between the Ardennes and the Vosges. Then Mau- 
beuge was the last hold remaining : the very last of all. 

Jourdan proposed, in that decisive Council of a few 
moments, held under that tent by lantern light in the foggy 
darkness while the day of their defeat was turning into the 
morrow, some plan for reinforcing the defeated left and of 
playing some stalemate of check and countercheck against 
the enemy; but Carnot was big with new things. He 
conceived an adventure possible only from his knowledge 
of what he commanded; he dismissed the mere written tradi- 
tions of war which Jourdan quoted because he knew that 
now — and within twelve hours — all must certainly be lost or 
won. He took counsel with his own great soul, and called, 
from within his knowledge of the French, upon the savagery 
and the laughter of the French service. He knew what 
abominable pain his scheme must determine. He knew by 
what wrench of discipline or rather of cruelty the thing must 



WATTIGNIES 523 

be done, but more profoundly did he know the temper of 
young French people under arms to whom the brutality of 
superiors is native and who meet it by some miraculous 
reserve of energy and of rebellious smiles. 

Those young French people, many half-mutinous, most 
of them ill-clothed, so many wounded, so many more palsied 
by the approach of death — all drenched under the October 
drizzle, all by this time weary of any struggle whatsoever, were 
roused in that night before their sleep was deep upon them. 

Carnot had determined to choose 7,000, to forbid them 
rest, to march them right along his positions and add them 
to the 8,000 on his right extreme wing, and then at morning, 
if men so treated could still charge, to charge with such 
overwhelming and unexpected forces on the right, where no 
such effort was imagined, and so turn the Austrian line. 

There were no bugle-calls, no loud voice was permitted ; 
but all the way down the valley for five miles orders were 
given by patrols whose men had not slept for thirty hours. 
They roused the volunteers and the cursing regulars from 
the first beginnings of their sleep ; they broke into the paltry 
comfort of chance bivouac fires ; they routed men out of the 
straw in barns and stables; they kicked up the half-dead, 
half-sleeping boys who lay in the wet grass marshes of the 
Tarsy; and during all that night by the strength which only 
this service has found it possible to conceive (I mean a 
mixture of the degrading and the exalted, of servitude and of 
vision) , from the centre and from the left — from the men 
who were shot down before Dourlers and from the men who 
had fled before the Austrian cavalry when Fromentin had 
failed — a corps was gathered together, under the thick night, 
drawn up in column and bidden march through the dark- 
ness by the lane that led towards the right of the position. 



524 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

With what deep-rooted hatred of commandment simmer- 
ing in them, those fellows went after thirty hours of use- 
less struggle to yet another unknown blind attempt, 
not historians but only men who have suffered such 
orders know. They were 7,000; the thick night, I 
say, was upon them; the mist lay heavy all over the wet 
land; and as they went through the brushwood and chance 
trees that separated the centre from the right of the French 
position, they heard the drip of water from the dead, hanging 
leaves. Their agony seemed to them quite wanton and 
purposeless. They were halted at last mechanically, like 
sheep, at various points under various sleeping farms in 
various deserted tiny, lightless villages. The night was far 
spent; they could but squat, despairing, each company at 
its halting-place waiting for the dawn and for new shambles. 
Meanwhile it was thick night. 



It was nearing midnight in Paris, but none yet felt fatigue, 

neither the Judges nor their prisoner; nor did 
Oct. 15,1793. . .° . . ^ 

In Paris, any in the straining audience that watched the 

11.30 p.m. gj^^ determination of this business suffer the 
approach of sleep. The list of the witnesses was done and 
their tale was ended. 

Herman leant forward, hawk-faced, and asked the 
Queen in the level judicial manner if she had anything to 
add to her defence before her advocates should plead. She 
answered complaining of the little time that had been 
afforded her to defend — and the last words she spoke to 
her Judges were still a vain repetition that she had acted only 
as the wife of the King and that she had but obeyed his will. 

The Bench declared the examination of the witnesses 



WATTIGNIES 525 

closed. For something like an hour that bronzed and 
hollow-faced man next by her, Fouquier Tinville, put for- 
ward the case for the Government; he was careful to avoid 
the mad evidence Hebert had supplied. When he sat down, 
the Defence spoke last — as had since Rome been the 
custom or rather the obvious justice of French procedure; 
so that the last words a jury may hear shall be words for the 
prisoner at the bar — but this was not a trial, though all 
the forms of trial were observed. Chauveau-Lagarde spoke 
first, his colleague next. \Mien they had ceased they were 
arrested and forbidden to leave the building, lest certain 
words the Queen had whispered should mean some com- 
munication with the invader. 

The summing up (for summing up was still permitted, 
and it would be a century of Revolutionary effort before the 
pressure of the Bench upon the Jury should be gradually 
raised) was what the angers of that night expected and 
received. It was three o'clock in the morning before the 
four questions were put to the jury. Four questions drawn 
indeed from the Indictment but avoiding its least proved 
or least provable clauses. Had there been relations between 
the Executive and the foreign enemies of the State, and 
promises of aid to facilitate the advance of their armies } 
If so, was Marie Antoinette of Austria proved to have been 
privy to that plan ? 

The Jury left the hall. A murmur of tongues loosened 
rose all around. The prisoner was led out beyond the doors 
of the chamber. For one long unexpected hour she was so 
detained while the Jury were still absent; then a signal was 
given to her guards and they led her in. 

The cold violence of formal law still dominated the 
lawyers. Herman put forth the common exhortation of 



526 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

judges against applause or blame. He read to her the 
Oct. 16, 1793. conclusions of the Jury: they were affirm- 
in Pans, 4 a. m. ^tive upon cvcry point of the four. He 
asked her with that same cold violence of formality, 
after the Public Prosecutor had demanded the penalty 
of death set down for such actions as hers in the new Penal 
Code, whether she had anything to say against her sen- 
tence. She shook her head. 

She was at the end of human things. She stood and saw 
the Judges upon the Bench conferring for a moment, she 
stood to hear her sentence read to her, and as she heard it 
she watched them in their strange new head-dress, all 
plumes, and she fingered upon the rail before her with the 
gesture ladies learn in fingering the keys: she swept her 
fingers gently as though over the keys of an instrument, and 
soon the reading of the sentence was done and they led her 
away. It was past four o'clock in the morning. 

On the terrace of his castle in Germany that night George 
of Hesse saw the White Lady pass, the Ghost without a face 
that is the warning of the Hapsburgs, and the hair of his 
head stood up. 



The long dark hours of the morning still held the troops 
1793 ^^^^ ^^^ marched over from the left to the right 
Before Mau- of the French positiou before Maubeuge. The 
first arrivals had some moments in which to fall 
at full length on the damp earth in the extremity of their 
fatigue, but all the while the later contingents came marching 
in until, before it was yet day but when already the farms 
about knew that it was morning, and when the cocks had 
begun to crow in the steadings, all rose and stood to arms. 



1 



A/!..^.. v.^^>,. ^/./.VX,., /^^,^...^f ^,. .J^y^ ,4^ 




WATTIGNIES 527 

The mist was deepening upon them, a complete silence 
interpenetrated the damp veil of it, nor through such weather 
were any lights perceptible upon the heights above which 
marked the end of the Austrian line. 



The Queen went down the stone steps of the passage: 
she entered regally into the cell made ready. 
She called without interval for pen and paper, in Paris', a little 
and she sat down to write. She felt, after that I'eforefour 

in the morning. 

transition from the populous court to the silence 
of these walls, an energy that was not natural and that could 
not endure, but that served her for an inspiration. She 
had tasted but a bowl of soup since the morning — nay, 
since the evening before, thirty hours — soon she must 
fail. Therefore she wrote quickly while her mood was 
still upon her. 

She sat and wrote to her dead husband's sister the letter 
which, alone of all her acts, lends something permanently 
noble to her name. It is a run of words exalted, dignified, 
and yet tremendous, nor does any quality about that four- 
fold sheet of writing, yellow with years, more astound the 
reader than the quality of revelation: for here something 
strong and level in her soul, something hitherto quite undis- 
covered, the deepest part of all, stands and shines. The sheet 
is blurred — perhaps with tears : we do not know whether 
ever it was signed or ended, but before the morning came she 
laid herself upon her bed in her poor black dress, her head 
was raised somewhat upon her right hand, and so lying she 
began very bitterly to weep. 

The priest of St. Landry, the parish church of the prison, 
entered to minister to her : she spoke just such few words to 



528 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

him as might assure her that he had sworn the civic oath 
and was not in communion. Wlien she knew this she would 
not hear him. But he heard her murmuring against the 
bitter cold, and bade her put a pillow upon her feet. She 
did so and was again silent. 

The hours wore on, the scent of newly lighted fires came 
from the prison yard and the noise of men awakening. 
The drip of the fussy weather sounded less in the increase of 
movement, and on the pavement of the quays without began 
the tramp of marching and the chink of arms ; from further 
off came the rumble of the drums : 30,000 were assembling 
to line her Way. The two candles showed paler in the 
wretched room. It was dawn. 



The 16th of October broke upon the Flemish Hills: the 
Oct. 16 1793. ^^^ "^^^ ^^^ endured that night-march along 
Before Mau- tj^g f^^nt of the battlc-ficld, the men who had 

l)euge, half- 
past six in the received them among the positions of the extreme 

morning. right. Still droopcd under the growing light and 

were invigorated by no sun. The mist of the evening and 

of the night from dripping and thin had grown dense and 

whitened with the morning, so that to every soldier a new 

despair and a new bewilderment were added from the very 

air, and the blind fog seemed to make yet more obscure 

the obscure designs of their commanders. The day of their 

unnatural vigil had dawned and yet there came no orders 

nor any stirring of men. Before them slow schistous slopes 

went upward and disappeared into the impenetrable weather 

which hid clogged ploughland and drenched brushwood of 

the rounded hill; hollow lanes led up through such a 

land to the summit of the little rise and the hamlet of 



WATTIGNIES 529 

Wattignies; this most humble and least of villages was 
waiting its turn for glory. 

The downward slope, which formed the eastern end of 
the Austrian line, the low rounded slope whose apex was 
the spire of the village, was but slightly defended, for it 
was but the extreme end of a position, and who could 
imagine then — or who noiv — that march through the 
sleepless night, or that men so worn should yet be ready 
for new action with the morning ? No reinforcement, 
Coburg knew, could come from behind that army: and 
how should he dream that Carnot had found the power to 
feed the fortunes of the French from their own vitals 
and to drag these shambling 7,000, wrenched from west 
to east during the darkness: or how, if such a thing 
had been done, could any man believe that, such a torture 
suffered, the 7,000 could still charge? 

Yet, had Coburg known the desperate attempt he would 
have met it, he would have covered that ultimate flank of 
his long ridge and reinforced it from his large reserve. But 
the deep mist and the dead silence harshly enforced during 
the night-march had hidden all the game, and in front of 
Wattignies, holding that round of sloping fields and the low- 
semicircular end of the ridge before the village, there were 
but 3,000; the infantry of Klebek, of Hohenlohe, and of 
Stern; for their cavalry they had behind them and along- 
side of the village farms a few dragoons; certain Croatian 
battalions stood in a second line. These, in that morn- 
ing, expecting nothing but perhaps the few troops as 
they had met easily the day before, waited under the 
mist in formation and heard no sound. The morning 
broadened ; the white vapour seemed lighter all 
around, but no voices could be heard, nor did there 



530 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

come up through its curtain any rumble of limber from 
the roads below. 



As the Queen so lay disconsolate and weeping bitterly, 
Oct. 16, 1793. stretched in her black gown upon the wretched 
Jevenin thT"^* ^^^ ^^^ Supporting her head upon her hand, 
morning. there Came in the humble girl who had served 

her faithfully and who was now almost distraught for what 
was to come. This child said: 

"You have not eaten all these hours. . . . What 
will you take now that it is morning .?" 

The Queen answered, still crying: "My child, I need 
nothing more: all is over now." But the girl added: 
"Madam, I have kept warm upon the hob some soup and 
vermicelli. Let me bring it you." The Queen, weeping 
yet more, assented. 

She sat up a moment (but feebly — her mortal fatigue had 
come upon her — her loss of blood increased and was con- 
tinued) , she took one spoonful and another ; soon she laid the 
nourishment aside, and the morning drew on to her death. 

She must change for her last exit. So much did the Revo- 
lution fear to be cheated of its defiance to the Kings that the 
warders had orders not to lose sight of her for one moment : 
but she would change. She would go in white to her end. 

The girl who had served her screened her a little, and in the 
space between the bed and the wall she crouched and put on 
fresh linen, and in place of her faded black a loose white mus- 
lin gown. Her widow's head-dress also, in which she had 
stood proudly before her Judges, she stripped of its weeds, 
and kept her hair covered by no more than the linen cap. 

The Judges came in and read to her her sentence. 



niyisrrios ^u NOM DE LA REPUBLIQUE. 

au Commandant - g(f- » 

neral de lajorce armie 

parisienne, i^i^— BB8^^^ 

J-j'acci'SATEUR public , pres Ic Tribuiml crlininel- 

r^volutionnairc, etabli i Paris par la loi du lo mars 1793, 

^^JvSrlNexecution du jugement du Tribunal A C£/oti^r>*»j^ 

d^^ r^*^^'*^'"' '<^ citoycn coramandant- 

g^n^ral de la force atm^e parisienne , de prcter main- 
forte et mettre sur pied la force publiqiic , necessaire a 
re.xdcution dudit jugeraent rendu contre 'f/io^'ut^U/frici'*^ 

o(tn^u*:i*t*.^ au4iic/te^ y^i ^.< a//?U4J /cifie/t" c\. qui \<o^ 

condarane a la peine de '^pT^VO tyU laquelle 

cxLculiou aura lieu Q-ct^ (ru^^ ^^'^^ ^^ ' 

^i>/' heur(y-det--<^rt^^^«^-;r-7 

sur la jjhce publiquc de ca/a.. ^<^'''2x^c^ tuM^ar^ 



dc cctte \ ille. Le ciloycn 



commandanl-gcTieral est requis d'cnvoycr ladlle force 
publique , cour du Palais, ledit jour, a /t^ccC-- lieures 
precises du 4'Hci4**^ 

Fait a Paris, \c%^ yi^i"^**^-^ ^ * 1*^ 

Tan /x^<^ dc la Republiquc fraurai,-e, une et ujdi- 
visiblc. fyv<^jlL '}4{e-tc-ul)y )6 fCt^ a^<m«_.^ — duyTFH^'^^ 



L 



AcCrSATEUR fUFLIC. 




FACSIMILE OF THE DEATH WARRANT OF 
:kL\RIE ANTOINETTE 



WATTIGNIES 531 

The executioner, awkward and tall, came in. He must 
bind her hand. "Why must you bind my hands.'' The 
King's hands were not bound." Yet w^ere her hands bound 
and the end of the rope left loose that her gaoler might 
hold it: but she, perhaps, herself, before they bound her, 
cut off the poor locks of her hair. 

They led her out past the door of the prison: she was 
"delivered" and signed for; on the steps be- 

. Oct. 16, 1793. 

fore the archway she went up into the cart, in paris, at 
hearing the crowd howling beyond the great thf morning ^° 
iron gates of the Law Courts, and seeing 
seated beside her that foresworn priest to whom she would 
not turn. . . . Nor were these the last humiliations: 
but I will not write them here. 

Up and down the passages of the prison a little dog whom 
she had cherished in her loneliness ran whining and 
disconsolate. 

The cart went lumbering on, past the quay, over 
the bridge under the murky drizzle. The windows beyond 
the river were full of heads and faces ; the edges of the quays 
were black with the crowd. The river Seine ran swollen 
with the rains; its tide and rolling made no mark upon 
the drenched water-walls of stone. The cart went lumber- 
ing on over the rough wet paving of the northern bank. 
It turned into the Rue St. Honore, where the narrow depth 
was full of noise. The long line of troops stood erect 
and close upon either side. The dense crowd still roared 
behind them: their prey sat upon the plank, diminished, 
as erect as the constraint of her bonds and her failing 
strength would allow. Her lips, for all their bent of agony, 
were still proud; her vesture was new: her delicate high 
shoes had been chosen with care for that journey — but 



532 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

her face might have satisfied them all. The painted red 
upon her cheeks was dreadful against her utter paleness: 
from beneath the linen of her cap a few whitened wisps of 
hair, hung dank upon her hollowed temples: a Victim. 
Her eyes were sunken, and of these one dully watched 
her foes, one had lost its function in the damp half- 
darkness of the cells: it turned blank and blind upon the 
rabble that still followed the walking jolt of the two cart- 
horses and the broad wheels. At the head of those 
so following, an actor-fellow pranced upon a horse, 
thrusting at her by way of index a sword, and shouting 
to the people that they held the tigress here, the Austrian. 
In the midst of those so following, an American, eager to 
see, elbowed his way and would not lose his vantage. From 
the windows of the narrow gulf the continued noise of won- 
der, of jeers, and of imprecations reached her. She still sat 
motionless and without speech : the executioner standing be- 
hind her holding the loose end of the cord, the forsworn priest 
sitting on the plank beside her but hearing no words of hers. 

It is said that as the tumbril passed certain masts whence 
limp tricoloured pennants hung she glanced at them and mur- 
mured a word ; it is to be believed that, a few yards further, 
at the turn into the Rue Royale, she gave way at the new sight 
of the Machine set up for her before the palace gardens. 

This is known, that she went up the steps of the scaffold 
at liberty and stood for a bare moment seen by 

Oct, 16, 1793. , , . . , ^ 

In Paris, at the great gathering m the square, a ngure 

twelvf^noon'* ^gaiust the trecs of what had been her gardens and 

the place where her child had played. It was 

but a moment, she was bound and thrown and the steel fell. 



WATTIGNIES 533 

On the low mud and slope of Wattignies the mist began 
to wreathe and thin as the hours approached 
high noon. _ Through gaps of it the three °:;„"i'r^e„ 
Austrian regiments could see trees now and ^^^^^ eleven in 

, . , 'IT 1 • 1 1 ^^® morning. 

then m the mid-distance, showmg huge, and 
in a moment covered again by new whorls of vapour. But 
still there was no sound. In front of them toward Dimont, 
to their left round the corner of the slope in the valley 
of Glarges, with every lift of vapour the landscape became 
apparent, when suddenly, as the mist finally lifted, the wide 
plain showed below them rolling southwards, a vast space 
of wind and air, and at the same moment they heard first 
bugles, then the shouts of command, and lastly the rising 
of the Marseillaise: Gaul was upon them. 

The sleepless men had been launched at last, the hollow 
lanes were full of them swarming upward : the fields were 
ribbed with their open lines, and as they charged they sang. 

Immortal song! The pen has no power over colour or 
over music, but though I cannot paint their lively fury or 
make heard their notes of triumph yet I have heard them 
singing: I have seen their faces as they cleared the last 
hedges of the rise and struck the 3,000 upon every side. 

These stood, wavered, fell back to re-form: then saw 
new masses of the Republicans, roaring up from Glarges 
behind their flank, broke and were scattered by the 
storm. The few heavy guns of the Austrians there em- 
placed were trained too late to check the onrush. The little 
pieces of the climbing and the surging men were dragged 
by laniards, unmasked behind gaps in the hurrying advance, 
crashed grape and were covered again for a moment by 
the living cover of the charge. The green at the hill- 
top was held, the poor yards and byres of Wattignies 



534 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

were scoured and thundered through, and Carnot, his hat 
upon his sword, and Duquesnoy his face half blood, and 
all the host gloried to find before them in their halting 
midday sweat when the great thrust was over, the level 
fields of the summit, the Austrian line turned, and an open 
way between them and Maubeuge. 

Two charges disputed their certain victory. First the 
Oct. 16, 1793, Hungarian cavalry galloped and swerved and 
Before Mau- \)j:o^q agaiust the dense and ever denser bodies 

beuge, just & 

past noon. that stiU swarmcd up three ways at once and 
converged upon the crested edge of the upland plain; then 
the Royal Bourbon, emigrants, nobles, swept upon the 
French, heads down, ready to spend themselves largely into 
death. They streamed with the huge white flag of the old 
Monarchy above them, the faint silver lilies were upon it, 
and from either rank the cries that were shouted in defiance 
were of the same tongue which since Christendom began 
has so perpetually been heard along all the battle fronts of 
Christendom. 



These also failed: a symbol m name a*nd in flag and in 
valour of that great, once good, and very ancient thing 
which God now disapproved. 

The strong line of Coburg was turned. It was turned 
and must roll back upon itself. Its strict discipline pre- 
served it, as did the loose order of the Republican advance 
and the maddened fatigue of the young men who had just 
conquered: for these could work a miracle but not yet 
achieve a plan. The enemy fell back in order, sombre, 
massed and regular, unharassed, towards the Sambre. 
The straggling French soldiery, wondering that the fighting 



WATTIGNIES 535 

had ceased (but wisely judged incapable of pursuit), pos- 
sessed the main road unhindered; and that evening drark 
with their comrades in Maubeuge. 

In this way was accomplished what a principal critic of 
the art of war' has called "The chief feat of arms of the 
Republic." 

It was somewhat past noon. 



Upon that scaffold before the gardens which had been 

the gardens of her home and in which her child „ ,„ ,„ 

o ^ ^ Oct. 16, 1793. 

had played, the Executioner showed at deliber- in Paris, just 

ation and great length, this way and that on ^" 
every side, the Queen's head to the people. 

i Napoleon Buonaparte. 



APPENDICES 



APPENDIX A 

THE OPERATION ON LOUIS THE SIXTEENTH OF FRANCE 

THE somewhat lengthy attempt to determine the exact 
date which changed the course of Louis XVI. 's life, 
to which I have been compelled in the text, would 
have been unnecessary had the document which proves both 
the operation itself and the moment of it been published. 

It is certain that Maria Theresa knew in the last year 
of the old King's reign the nature of the trouble.' 

Louis XVI. 's hesitation in the matter endured through 
the month immediately succeeding his accession; though 
in the December' of that year he seems to have come very 
near to a decision. It is certain that the Emperor was to 
act with authority in the matter; and it is probable that 
Louis XVI's long and disastrous hesitation was in part 
occasioned by his brother-in-law's delay and postpone- 
ment of his voyage to Versailles. 

Mercy was informed thoroughly of the main object of the 
Emperor's visit just before it took place,' and Maria Theresa 
at the same time specially emphasised to her Ambassador 
this capital business which her son had undertaken.* 

* Maria Theresa to Mercy, 3rd January, 1774. — " Je ne compte presque plus que sur I'entremise de 
empereirr, qui h son arrivfe h. Versailles, trouvera peut-etre le moyen." 

2 Marie Antoinette to Maria Theresa, lyth December, 1774. — " Le roi a eu il y a huit jours une grande 
conversation avec mon m^decin; je suis fort contente de ses dispositions et j'ai bonne esp&ance de suivre bien- 
tdt I'example de ma soeur." 

'Mercy to Maria Theresa, 18/A March, 1777. — " Relativement au s^jour que fera ici S. M. I'emper- 
eur, et k toutes les circonstances qui pourront en r&ulter, il ne me reste pas la moindre incertitude sur les 
hautes intentions de V. M., et ses ordres seront remplis avec tout le scrupule et le soin qu'exige I'impor- 
tance d'une pareille conjuncture dont il peut r6sulter tant de difi&ents effets." 

* Maria Theresa to Mercy, 31st March, 1777. — " Vous pouvez bien croire que ce point est un des plus 
importants a &laircir, s'il y k esp&er de la succession ou point, et vous tacherez de mettre au clair tela avec 
I'empereur." 

£39 



540 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

We know that the operation was performed by the 
King's surgeon, Lassone, and the point is to determine, 
in the absence of direct evidence, the date upon which 
Lassone operated. 

I say "in the absence of direct evidence," for, though 
that evidence exists, it is not available. All papers left 
by Lassone, including the proces verbal of the operation 
on the King, were ultimately brought into the collection 
of Feuillet de Conches. This collector has been dead 
twenty years, and Dr. Des, among others, asked, just 
after his death, for the production of this all-important 
document; but it was refused, and I believe it is still refused. 

It is a great loss to history. Moreover, one does not see 
what purpose can be served by such reticence, if, as I believe, 
it is still maintained. 

As it is, we must depend upon a few veiled and discreet 
allusions in the contemporary correspondence of Mercy, 
the Queen, and the Empress. The principal of these con- 
sist in nine passages, the first of which is as follows : — 

" Le 27 je me rendis de grand matin a Versailles, ou, apres avoir parle 
d'affaires avec le comt de Vergennes, j'allai a I'hotel garni qu'occupait I'em- 
pereur. Le premier medecin Lassone avait ete pendant une heure chez S. 
M., et elle etait alors dans son cabinet avec I'abbe de Vermond." 

This letter was written on 15th June, 1777. Mercy, 
who had been in very bad health, sends to Maria Theresa 
his account of the Emperor's visit. In this letter he men- 
tions, under the date Tuesday, 27th May, a long interview 
which the Emperor had with Lassone, he himself, Mercy, 
being present, and also Vermond, the Queen's former 
tutor. Later in the day the Emperor spent two hours alone 
with his brother-in-law, discussing, in Mercy's phrase, "con- 
fidential details." It was at this momennt, presumably, that 



APPENDICES 541 

the Emperor persuaded the King. It will be seen, therefore, 
that he put off mention of the matter until late in his visit, 
at the end of the month of May. Maria Theresa, having 
by that time had opportunity of hearing by word of mouth 
things that could hardly be written, writes that she is con- 
tent so far as things have gone, but is waiting to hear about 
everything from her son on his return. 

She also writes to Marie Antoinette on the 29th June, 
1777, as follows: — 

" J'en attends les plus heureuses suites, et meme pour votre etat de manage, 
sur lequel on me laisse esperance: mais on remet le tout au retour,' ou on 
pourra me parler." 

It is evident that nothing was done during the Emper- 
or's actual stay, or in his presence. On the 29th of August, 
Maria Theresa, having seen her son, is still by no means 
certain.* One must allow a fortnight (more or less) for news 
to reach her from Versailles. We may be confident, there- 
fore, that whatever was written to about her the middle of 
the month of August was not yet wholly reassuring, though 
this may not prove that no operation had taken place; it 
may only go to show that success was not yet certain. 

It is on the 10th of September, in a letter from Marie 
Antoinette to Maria Theresa that the first note of confidence 
on the part of the Queen appears. It was premature, but 
matters were now certain.* 

We may, therefore, take it for certain that things were 
settled not earlier than the middle of August, nor later than 
the end of the first week of September; and it may be pre- 
dicted that when Lassone's paper sees the light it will bear 
a date within those three weeks. 

*" The return," of the Emperor, that is. 

•Maria Theresa to Mercy, 29/fe August, 1777. — "Je le souhaite k I'egard du roi, mais je n'en suis 
pas rassurfe." 

•"Ce nouveau-n€" — she writes of her sister-in-law's child — "me fait encore plus de plaisir par l'esp&- 
ance que j'ai d'avoii bientdt le mtoie bonheur." 



542 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

' Mercy sees by January* that everything is long settled. 
The Queen knew herself to be with child in the first week 
in April, and news was sent to her mother on the date 
which I have given in the text. 

* " Je dois aussi ajouter la remarque trfes essentielle que la reine continue h se conduire tr&s-bien avec le 
roi, qui de son c6t6 persiste k vivre maritalement dans le sens le plus exact et le plus r&l." 



APPENDIX B 

ON THE EXACT TIME AND PLACE OF DROUEt's RIDE 

THE reader or student acquainted with various 
records of the French Revolution may be tempted 
to regard the account of Drouet's Ride in my text 
as containing too much detail for accurate history; espec- 
ially as no historian has hitherto done more than vaguely al- 
lude to it. I will therefore in this Appendix show the way in 
which I found it possible to reproduce every circumstance 
of Drouet's movements from the time when he left Ste. 
Menehould until the time of his arrival at Varennes. 

The berline left Ste. Menehould shortly after eight. It 
had to climb to Germeries Wood* on the crest of the forest, 
four hundred feet in four miles. It could not possibly, there- 
fore, have reached the summit till after nine, and however 
fast was the run down on to Islettes (just over five miles 
from Ste. Menehould) that village cannot have been 
reached before 9.15. From Islettes to Clermont is just four 
miles, and mostly slightly rising. The best going could not 
cover the distance in twenty minutes, which puts the earliest 
possible entry into Clermont at twenty-five or twenty to ten. 
The change of horses took from ten minutes to a quarter of 
an hour. Put it at the lowest, and one has for the earliest 
possible time the berline can have left Clermont that it 
must have been within ten minutes of ten o'clock. 

From Clermont to Varennes is nine miles: a straight 
road, d escending slightly on the whole, but not quite flat. 

*The summit is 860 feet above the sea; the town about 460 feet. 

645 



544 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

Under the best conditions that day the berline had not 
covered ten miles in the hour; let it gallop at twelve (a pace 
it was quite incapable of, save in short spells) and Varennes 
would still be three-quarters of an hour off. 

Now Varennes was entered just on a quarter to eleven. 
The berline cannot, therefore, have left Clermont later than 
ten; and cannot have arrived earlier than ten minutes to ten; 
so this departure of the Royal Family from Clermont for 
Varennes, of Drouet's postilions back from Clermont for Ste. 
Menehould, took place sometime in those ten minutes. 

Now Drouet reached Varennes before eleven. He 
reached it round about by the forest — not by the main 
road — and he reached it by a gallop through a pitch- 
dark night in dense wood without a moon.' The shortest 
line as the crow flies from the last bend of the road before 
Clermont to Varennes Bridge is ten miles; any deviation 
through the wood, even in a straight line, would make it 
nearly twelve. It is very difficult to cover twelve miles 
in an hour under such conditions, but even if you allow 
Drouet that pace he must leave the high roadabout ten. 

All this synchronises to within a very few minutes. The 
postilions leave Clermont to turn back home in the ten 
minutes before ten; they go fast, for they are riding light; 
a mile or so up the road they meet their master. It is just 
here that the forest on the northern side of the ravine 
touches the modern railway and comes nearest to the road. 
Drouet takes to the forest certainly not before ten and 
equally certainly not ten minutes after. 
■ So much for the hour at which he took to the wood. 
' Now what road did he pursue in the forest.? C)nly one 
is possible. The forest here covers a high ridge, some 

^The sky was overcast. 



APPENDICES 545 

three hundred feet above the open plain. Down in the 
plain, parallel to this ridge and at its base, runs the high 
road from Clermont to Varennes, with a row of farms 
and wide fields between it and the edge of the wood. Had 
Drouet gone anywhere but along the ridge he would have 
had to cross some twenty streams, to climb and fall over 
as many ravines {all of clay), to flank a dozen clay ponds 
and marshes, and with all this there was no continuous 
path. He could not have done it in two hours, let alone 
one. He was compelled to follow the ridge. It so hap- 
pens that there runs all along the ridge a green ride called 
"the High Ride." It is a Gaulish track of great antiquity, 
known to the peasantry as "the Roman Way." It does 
not come down as far as Clermont, it leaves the forest at the 
farm and huts of Locheres. To this farm Drouet must 
have made his way by the lanes and gates of Jacques and 
Haute Prise — once at Locheres, a hard gallop along the 
High Ride brought him in six or seven miles to the Crossed 
Stone (called also the Dead Girl); here another green ride 
crosses the main ride of the ridge. He took this cross ride to 
the right hand: it leads down and out of the forest; one comes 
out of the wood a mile or so from Varennes with the town 
right below one and what was then a lane (now it is a county 
road) through the open valley fields. Just before entering 
the town a detour (by where the tile-works are now) would get 
him into the Rue de Mont Blainville, and so to the Bridge : a 
detour serving the double purpose of avoiding possible troops 
at the entry to the town and of getting ahead of any carriage 
coming in from Clermont. He cannot but have taken this 
detour, have noted the waggon by the bridge as he passed 
it (he later used it to block the bridge) and then have come 
up the main street from the river. 




APPENDIX C 

THE ORDER TO CEASE FIRE 

^HE order to cease fire, which forms the frontis- 
piece of this book, and which is the last executive 
document of the French monarchy, has been 
misunderstood by not a few critics, and its value thereby 
lessened. 

It is, as I shall presently show, authentic, and therefore 
of the highest possible interest to every student of history. 
The traveller will find it to-day in the central glass case 
of the square Revolutionary Room in the Carnavalet 
Museum. The body of the writing is not in the hand of 
Louis himself, but the signature is undoubtedly his. The 
lines were scribbled in haste by some one attendant upon 
the King, signed by him, and sent to the palace. 

Now no event of such importance and so recent has 
been more variously described by eye-witnesses than the 
fall of the palace in 1792; and the particular incident of 
the order to cease fire suffers, like every other detail of 
those famous hours, from a plethora, and therefore a con- 
flict, of evidence. 

It may be remarked in passing, and by way of digression, 
that such difficulty cannot but attach to any episode of 
hard fighting, on account of the mental condition which 
that exercise produces. There is exactly the same trouble, 
for instance, in determining with exactitude the all-impor- 
tant moment of the evening in which the Guard failed at 
Waterloo. 

546 



APPENDICES 547 

We may confidently say, however, that two separate mes- 
sages were sent to the palace. The first was a verbal 
message to cease fire, which reached Herville, who was 
directing the whole operation. Herville, as we know, 
refused to obey, having the action well in hand, and being 
yet confident of success. Either after the southern end of 
the Tuileries had been forced by the populace (who, as 
we know now, turned the flank of the defence by fighting 
their way through from the Long Gallery), or while that 
capital incident was in progress, Durler, a captain of the 
Swiss Guards, commanding no more than a company, 
but probably the company which had the best chance of 
retreating, asked for orders. It is difficult to believe that 
he would have done so unless the position was already 
desperate. The order which reached him was a repetition 
of the former one, but it was written, not verbal, and it is 
this second written order the facsimile of which forms the 
frontispiece to this volume. Durler did not see it 
written. He had gone in person to learn what he should 
do, but he was back again with his men before the 
note was handed to him. He was a perfectly honest and 
trustworthy man and his testimony remains. It is 
evident from this testimony that, by the time the note 
came, all was over. 

As to the pedigree of the document: — 

Durler rose to the rank of general before his death. He 
naturally regarded this piece of historic writing as among 
the most precious of his possessions, and left it to his family 
who were resident in Lucerne. Chateaubriand, visiting 
Lucerne on the 15th of May, 1832, saw it in that town. 
From General Durler's daughter and heiress it descended 
to his grandchildren, Schimacher by name, and was in the 



548 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

early eighties the property of M. Felix Schimacher of 
Lucerne, whose agent in Paris was a banker, Mr. de Trooz. 
M. Cousin, the curator of the Municipal Museum of 
Paris (the Carnavalet), hearing of it, approached Mr. 
de Trooz, and offered a large sum on behalf of the city. 
The offer was accepted. The pedigree of the document 
was drawn up by M. Dagobert Schimacher, lawyer in 
Lucerne, and the whole despatched to Paris, where the 
purchase was completed on the 27th of July, 1886, and 
the document deposited in the Museum, where it now lies. 



APPENDIX D 

ON THE LOGE OF THE ** LOGOTACHYGRAPHE " 

THE Manege was pulled down after the consular 
decree of year XI., which originated the Rue de 
Rivoli; the historical reconstruction of its arrange- 
ments on the 10th of ilugust, 1792, is the more difficult 
from the fact that the only accurate plan of it which has 
come down to us* dates from a period earlier than Decem- 
ber, 1791, in which month (on the 27th) the order was 
given to change nearly the whole of its dispositions. The 
box of the Logographe can be fixed in this plan (though 
not in the new place it occupied after the 5th of Janu- 
ary, 1792). » 

We know' that it was near the President's Chair, and 
this was on the south side of the Manege, in the middle. 
It was in this box that the Queen had appeared when her 
husband had accepted the Constitution on the return from 
Varennes; and it was in this box that the Royal Family were 
supposed, until lately, to have stayed in the three days 
after the fall of the palace. 

There were many such grated boxes for reporters up 
and down the Hall: the proximity of the Logographes to 
the Chair being due to the desire for accurate verbatim 
reports to be recorded from the best acoustic position of 
the Hall. 

But our establishment of the Logographe* s box is of 

• In the Histoire des Edifices, &c., by Paris. . 

*The work was finished by the 26th of January, 1792. 

• By the 7th clause of the order cited. 

549 



550 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

little value to the history of the 10th of August, because, 
though a confusion was till recently made between the two, 
the box in which the Royal Family were put was that of 
the Logotachygraphe, a journal not yet published, but 
in preparation, and one which had already obtained leave 
to have its reporting place in the Hall. Its exact situation 
we cannot determine, but it was certainly not far from the 
Chair on the south wall, and presumably in the eastern 
half of it. 



APPENDIX E 



>> 



UPON THE LAST PORTRAIT OF THE QUEEN BY KUCHARSKI 

THREE "last" portraits of Marie Antoinette, each 
very similar to the two others, though not replicas, 
are known to exist: each is ascribed to the painter 
Kucharski, who appears for a moment at the Queen's 
trial, and who is known to have painted her at Court. 

These portraits are, one in Arenberg Gallery at Brussels, 
another in the Carnavalet, and the third in the new Revo- 
lutionary Room on the third floor at Versailles. This last 
is the one which is reproduced here, because M. de Nolhac, 
by far the best authority, has assured me of its authenticity. 
On the other hand, it must be mentioned that the Belgian 
one was vouched for by Auguste d'Arenberg' who bought 
it in 1805, and who quotes the testimony of the painter* 
himself, who was then alive. 

* See " Notes sur quelques Portraits de la Galerie d' Arenberg," in the Annales de VAcadtmie Royale d'Arch- 
eologie de Bdgique, 4th series, vol. x., 1897. 

*0n this painter there exists a monograph by Mycielski (Paris, 1894), and an artide published in the Decem- 
ber number, 1905, of the Revue d'Art, Ancien el Moderne. 

He appears to have afiBrmed that he saw the Queen in the Temple when he was on guard, took the sketch, 
noting the details of dress, &c.| and completing the work at home. 



551 



APPENDIX F 

ON THE AUTHENTICITY OF THE QUEEN's LAST LETTER 

THE few doubts that some have put forward against 
the authenticity of this famous document will 
i unless history abandons its modern vices, increase 

with time, for it is a document exactly suited to the type 
of minute, internal, literal, and documentary criticism 
by which tradition is, to-day, commonly assailed. It will 
be pSmted out that the psychology of this letter differs 
altogether from that of the mass of Marie Antoinette's little 
scribbled notes, and equally from her serious political drafts 
and despatches. Critics will very probably be found to 
dispute the possibility of such a woman at such a time 
producing such a document. The style fits ill with what 
she was in Court just before it purports to have been written, 
and also with what she was on her way to the scaffold just 
after. Most important of all, perhaps, the sentences are 
composed in a manner quite different from that of any 
other letter of hers we possess; they have a rhythm and a 
composition in them: the very opening words are in a 
manner wholly more exalted and more rhetorical than ever 
was her own. 

It will be further and especially pointed out that the 
moment when it was discovered was the very moment 
for forgery, and this point is of such importance to the dis- 
cussion that I must elaborate it. 

By nightfall of June 18th, 1815, the experiment of found- 
ing democracy in Europe was imagined to be at an end: 

55i 



APPENDICES 653 

Napoleon was definitely defeated. On the 7th of July the 
first forces of the Allies entered Paris, and on the 20th of 
November was signed the second Treaty of Paris, whereby 
the reinstatement of the old regime in France was accom- 
plished at a price to the nation of 700,000,000 francs and 
all of its conquests. All the power of a highly centralised 
Government was now in the hands of Louis XVIII., and it 
was in the highest degree profitable to prove oneself a friend 
to what had but a few months before seemed a lost cause. 
Document after document appeared professing a special 
knowledge of the woes of the Royal Family, petition after pe- 
tition was presented in which the petitioners (nearly al^^ lys in 
the same conventional and hagiographical style) spoke of the 
Royal "martyrs" in the Temple and in the Conciergerie. 

In the light of such a character attaching to this particular 
moment, note the following sequence of dates in connec- 
tion with the production of the document we are discussing. 

Not two months after the signing of the Treaty of Paris 
the French Chamber voted the Law of Amnesty. The 
seventh clause of this Act banished the regicides who had 
sat in the Convention. Among these was a certain Courtois, 
a man now over seventy years of age, who had bought a large 
country house and estate near the frontier. Note, further, 
that Courtois had started as a small bootmaker and was one 
of the very few politicians of the Revolution who had fol- 
lowed our modern practice of making money out of politics. 
His honesty, therefore, was doubtful: a thing which we 
cannot say of the enthusiasts of the time. Of those we 
can say that their imaginations or their passions may warp 
their evidence, but in the case of Courtois we know that he 
was a professional politician of the modern type, and would 
do a dishonest thing for money. 



554 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

Now this Courtois had been one of a Commission named 
by the Convention to examine Robespierre's papers after the 
fall of Robespierre on the 28th of July, 1794. He was what 
the French call the Reporter of the Commission — that 
is, the director of it — and it was called the "Courtois 
Commission." The Commission published their report 
of what they had found in Robespierre's house. It was a 
report two volumes in length for which Courtois was 
responsible, and of which he was practically the author. 

This minute and voluminous report made no mention of 
the Queen's letter. Not a word is heard of it during all 
those twenty-two years until the aforesaid Bill of Amnesty 
is before the French Parliament of the Restoration and 
the regicides, including old Courtois, passing his last days 
on his comfortable estate, are to suffer exile. Then for 
the first time the Queen's letter appears. On the 25th 
of January, 1816, Courtois writes to a prominent lawyer, 
an acquaintance of his wife's, a Royalist, and in touch 
with the Court, telling him that he had kept back ten pieces 
among the mass of things found in Robespierre's house, 
three of them trinkets, a lock of hair, etc., one or two 
letters of no importance — and the capital point of all, 
this letter of Marie Antoinette's to her sister-in-law. He 
offers to exchange these against a special amnesty to him- 
self, or at least of a year's delay before he is exiled, in 
order, presumably, to allow him to realise his fortune. 

This is not all: the letter was not written until Courtois' 
wife was dead; and it was written on the very day of her 
death and the moment after it — the moment, that is, after 
the death of the only person who would presumably know — 
if he allowed anyone to know — whether he had or had not 
carefully concealed these documents for so many years. 



APPENDICES 555 

The Government of Louis XVIII. offered money for the 
letter, and, having so lulled the suspicions of Courtois, sent 
one of its officials without warning into his house and 
seized his effects. Some days afterwards the letter (which 
no one had yet seen or heard of) is produced by Royal order 
and shown to Madame d'Angouleme (who is said to have 
fainted when she saw it), and ordered to be read from 
every pulpit during Mass on the 16th of October of every 
year; a vast edition of it is brought out in facsimile and 
distributed broadcast, and the letter itself is enshrined 
among the public exhibits at the Archives. 

A lengthy analysis of the sort just concluded is neces- 
sary to make the reader understand how and why a strong 
attack upon the authenticity of the letter will sooner or 
later certainly be made. I owe it to my readers to say 
why the apparently strong presumption against this letter 
does not in my opinion hold. 

First let me recapitulate what is to be said against it: 

(1) There is no contemporary trace of it.* 

(2) It appears at a moment when forged documents of 
that sort were of the highest value both to a despotic Gov- 
ernment and to the vendors or producers of them. 

(3) That moment is no less than twenty-two years pos- 
terior to the supposed writing of the letter, and, during all 
those twenty-two years, of the many who should have 
seen it, of the three public men (all enemies) through whose 
hands it must have passed, no one has heard of its exist- 
ence nor mentioned it in a private correspondence, nor 

' The woman Bault, who was wardress of the Conciergerie, says that her husband told her of such a 
letter, but her evidence is given after Louis XVIII. had published it, and for all those twenty-two years 
she had said nothing about it. Moreover she talked of its discovery with the usual clap-trap phrases of "The 
Omnipotence of Heaven showing its ineffable goodness by restoring us this monument in its most admir- 
able way, &c." And the only contemporary account, while it does mention the lock of hair which the Queen 
desired given to a friend, says nothing of the letter. 



556 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

apparently so much as spoken of it in a conversation to a 
friend. 

(4) It is heard of from a man who would have every 
interest in forging it and who is known to have been very 
unscrupulous in political dealings for money. 

(5) He makes his offer on the very day when the last 
witness there could be against him dies. 

(6) The document, when it does appear, appears with- 
out any pedigree, or chain of witnesses to vouch for it, nor 
even any tradition. It is vouched for only by the people 
who had most interest in creating such a relic and is forced 
upon the public with every apparatus at the command of 
a despotic Government. 

(7) Most important of all, the letter is written in a high 
and affecting style wholly different from all that we know 
of Marie Antoinette's writing, and quite inconsistent with 
her demeanour at the moment, consonant only with the 
sanctity which it was at that moment desired to give to the 
Royal Family. 

Nevertheless I believe the document to be without the 
slightest doubt authentic, and I will give my reasons for 
this certitude : — 

(1) To forge a letter of Marie Antoinette's is peculiarly 
diflScult. There have been many such attempts. They 
have been discovered with an ease familiar to all students 
of her life. 

This difficulty lies in the great irregularity of her method 
of writing, coupled with the exact persistence of certain 
types of letter. She never in her life could write a line 
straight across a page. She never made two "d's" exactly 
the same, and yet you never can mistake one of her "d's." 
She never crossed a "t" quite in the same manner twice, 



APPENDICES 557 

and yet you can always tell her way of crossing it. The 
absence of capitals after a full stop is a minor point but 
a considerable one. She always brought the lower loop of 
the "b'* up to the up stroke, so that it looks like an "f*; 
she always separated her "I's" from the succeeding letter* 
Let the reader compare the document of which I am 
speaking, reproduced in facsimile opposite page 526, 
and her letter of the 3rd of September, 1791, to Joseph II. 
(opposite page 400), and he will see what I mean. The 
first is reproduced on a four-fifths scale, the second in fac- 
simile, but the points I make can easily be followed upon 
them. Note the first "d" in the first line of the letter writ- 
ten in prison, the second "d" and the third "d" all in the 
same line. Next look down to the seventh line and note 
the "d" in "tendre," and see how the first three "d's" 
though irregular are of the same type, and how the fourth, 
though much less hooked, is obviously written by the 
same hand. Look down two lines lower to the **d" in 
"plaidoyer"; it has a complete hook and is quite different 
from the other letters, and three lines lower, in the word 
"deux," the hook has a sharp angle apparent nowhere 
else on the page. Now if you turn to the "d's" in her letter 
to her brother of the 3rd of September, 1791, you will 
find exactly the same characteristics. Not one "d" like 
another, yet all obviously from the same hand; the "d" 
in the second line with a full hook to it, the two "d's" in 
the twelfth line much vaguer. 

So with the "t's," they are crossed in every kind of way 
with a short straight line, a long curved one, a little jab 
followed by a straight, now with a slope downward, now 
with a slope upward, but all evidently from the same hand, 
and their very variety makes it impossible for them to be 



558 MARIE ANTOINETTE 

a forgery. The "I's" written separately from the letter 
following each, are obvious everywhere, so is that irregular- 
ity of line of which I have spoken. Let the reader look at 
the third line of the letter of the 3rd of September, 1791 
(opposite page 400), and at the seventh line of the letter 
written in prison, and ask himself whether it would have 
been possible to copy such native irregularity. 

The identity of handwriting is apparent even frorgt 
these two documents. It is absolutely convincing to any 
one who has seen much of her penmanship. 

(2) To the faults in grammar and in spelling I should 
pay little attention — those things are easily copied; but 
it is worth remarking that on the third line of the letter 
written in prison she spells the infinitive of "montrer" with- 
out the final "r" as though it were a participle, while in 
the letter written to her brother in 1791 she makes no such 
error. She puts an "e" in "Jouis," and so forth. All 
these discrepancies are a proof of the authenticity of the 
letter. She spelt at random, and her grammar was at 
random, though she got a little more accurate as she grew 
older. It would, on the contrary, be an argument against 
the authenticity of the letter if particular mistakes, dis- 
covered in a particular document of hers, were repeated 
in this last letter from the Conciergerie. ji 

(3) The letter was immediately exposed to public view; 
the paper was grown yellow, the writing was apparently old, j 
the ink in places faded, the creases deep and worn. Now ' 
all these accidental features could no doubt be reproduced 
by a modern forger with the advantage of modern methods, 
modern mechanical appliances, modern chemical science 
and photography. They could not have been achieved 
by a forger of 1816. 



APPENDICES 559 

It seems to me, therefore, a document absolutely unassail- 
able. The arguments against it are of the same sort which 
modern scepticism perpetually brings against every form 
of historical evidence that does not fit in with some favour- 
ite modern theory. I must believe the evidence of my 
senses, and I am compelled to admit that a woman, every 
expression of whose soul was different from this, and whose 
^vhole demeanour before and after writing the letter betrayed 
a mental condition quite inconsistent with the writing of it, 
was granted for perhaps an hour (in spite of a full day's 
fast, the fear of imminent death and the breakdown of her 
health and of all her power), an exaltation suflficient to pro- 
duce this wonderful piece of prose, and a steadfast control 
of language and a discovery of language miraculously 
exceptional to her character and experience. 

No other conclusion is possible to a student unless, like 
any Don, he prefers a sceptical hypothesis to the testimony 
of his eyes and the judgment of his common sense. 



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